some medicines of the paregoric and hypnotic kind, with a view,
simply--for I could do no more--of relieving a slight pain which
occasionally, but at considerable intervals, interfered with her good
spirits. I continued my visits, and often witnessed scenes similar to
those I described. The patient was gradually approaching the dread
issue; and still, at every meeting, that beautiful young woman watched
my every look, and searched my heart with those brilliant eyes, that
spoke some mysterious language, which even the deepest feelings of
friendship for her benefactress would scarcely explain. The patient
herself felt no solicitude--she saw no danger. It was clearly otherwise
with her niece: but what surprised me was, that this devoted girl only
looked her intense feelings; she never asked me if her aunt was in
danger. Every glance, every movement, showed that she felt it; but the
fear of having her apprehensions confirmed--such, at least, was my
construction of her strange conduct--sealed up her lips, and constrained
her to a solemn silence.
One day I called, and was shown into an anteroom, until some friend had
departed. I heard words in an adjoining closet, and knew the voice of
Louisa--for such was the name of the fair creature who had claimed so
much interest from me.
"Why will not you, my dearest Louisa?" said the soft voice of a young
man. "This is terrible! Think, love, meditate, what will be the dreadful
issue! Oh, sweet, angelic being! why were you fated to make me adore you
for acting against those wishes I now breathe in your ear? Ask the
doctor; tell him the awful secret, that our happiness depends on ten
written letters of a name; and he has only to say write, and it is
written."
"I have already tried to speak to him, but I cannot. Alfred, I see our
danger. My aunt, I fear, is dying. The L20,000 left her by her husband
goes to a sordid wretch, his brother, if she dies without a will. There
is none on earth she loves but me and Alfred. O beloved Alfred! you
alone divide, with that angelic woman, the affection of your Louisa. You
are poor; I know it; I have wept for it. I have nothing on this earth.
If she die without a will, we are beggars, and her last breath will wail
our destiny, and her last tear tell her too late her unavailing
sympathy. I know all this. It is my night thought, my day dream, my
love's whisper, my Alfred's theme; but, God help me, I cannot break this
subject to the doctor; my very heart bounds within my bosom at the
thought of raising one slight fear in the breast of that woman to whom I
owe all the happiness I have ever experienced upon earth. What, oh, what
shall be done, Alfred?"
I heard her sobs burst from her, as she sought for sympathy in the bosom
of her lover.
"Louisa, love, lift up your head," he answered. "You are sacrificing
both of us to a feeling which that excellent woman herself would
pronounce a weakness and a cruelty to both you and her. Think, love,
what shall be the thoughts, the agonies, of your aunt, if she finds
herself firmly locked in the arms of death, and her hands bound up, by
his rigid grasp, from obeying the dictates of a bursting, breaking
heart. The thought that Augustus Germain, the man she hates, inherits
all her fortune, and that her dear Louisa is left by her a beggar, will
drag her parting spirit to the confines of the flesh, and torture it in
the body's expiring struggle. You tremble at rousing in her a fear of
death, by the mention of the will; and you inflict a thousand agonies,
by leaving her unprepared for that death when it comes. Louisa, Louisa,
lift up your head, and say if these are not the words of truth."
A silence succeeded these words. The girl was in tears, and her feelings
choked her reply.
"I feel that you have spoken truth, Alfred," said she; "yet I cannot do
it, I cannot--I will rather be a beggar."
"And you _will_ be a beggar, sweet but deluded girl," rejoined the
lover; "and Alfred, who would have died for his Louisa, will be also a
beggar, through her weakness. Love is hated by the Fates."
Another pause intervened, of some moments.
"But, Alfred," resumed the sobbing girl, "if--if--oh, I tremble at the
word--if my aunt should die without a will, and your Louisa, in place of
having twenty thousand pounds, is, as she will be, a beggar--will your
love for me, Alfred--ah, I choke--the thought swells my heart----"
"I know it--I know it, Louisa," replied he; "mention it not--it is well
that your swelling heart binds up the treacherous word--would not
Louisa, with all her aunt's wealth, take Alfred, who has nothing--shall
not Alfred, who has nothing, take his Louisa, a beggar? Lovely girl!
good, elevated, and noble as you are, I question if you sufficiently
appreciate the devotedness of your Alfred. But, Louisa, think again of
what I have said. I see you again to-morrow. Oh, how time flies, when I
think of your aunt!--how it lags when I think of you! Think--think, ere
it be too late."
"I cannot--I cannot," replied she.
There was an embrace; he departed, and the disconsolate Louisa sat and
wept bitterly alone.
The servant came and told me that Mrs Germain was now alone. I hastened
to her. She was, as usual, on the couch. The disease was gradually
progressing, but without making much of external ravage; and her spirits
were as good as usual.
"Ha, doctor," she said, briskly, as I went forward, "that was Augustus
Germain who now went from me. Know you him? He is the brother of my
deceased husband; and now, when I am ailing, though, Heaven be praised,
not dying, he has begun to sneak about me, for his own private ends. I
have not seen his face these six months. Do you know he is in my power?
I can leave the whole fortune I got from his brother past him--to whom I
please. Ha! ha!"
"And do you intend, madam, to leave it past him?" replied I, looking in
her face gravely.
"Intend!" cried she, with another laugh, which I feared would burst the
tumour, and end her life in the instant. "Why, to be sure I do. Louisa
Milford shall be my heir, though I had a million for every thousand.
That girl, sir, is a jewel beyond the value of all that Golconda could
give up from its inmost recesses. She loves Alfred Stanford, a young man
as noble in his sentiments, as she is kind, and gentle, and true in her
affections; but he is poor, and, praise be to Heaven! I have the means
of making them rich and happy."
"And why do you delay this act of kindness and duty," said I, with a
look fixed on her eyes, "when you and all others are aware how very
brittle a thread life hangs by?"
She looked at me firmly and intently as I pronounced these words, and
paused a little, as if she felt some slight shock, which she required to
overcome.
"Do _you_ think, sir," replied she, "that I ought not to delay that
act?"
"Though you were in perfect health, madam, I should, answer, yes,
undoubtedly," said I, with eagerness.
"Then I may as well do it now, when I am only slightly ailing," answered
she; recovering, in a moment, from the slight uneasiness I had caused
her; "yet, somehow or other, I am so filled with the spirit of life--so
young--I mean comparatively--with so many years before me--with such a
gay world around me, that I cannot help laughing at making a will. I
must put on spectacles, I presume, when I sign it, and look grave and
antiquated. Ha! ha! Well, I shall send for old parchment Jenkins in the
evening; and, as I would wish you to be present at the execution, I will
thank you to make your visit to me in the evening to-morrow. Old
Goosequill and you may partake of a glass of my burgundy, vintage '94,
on the head of the young widow's settlement."
"I shall attend, madam," said I; "and, if you please, I shall send Mr
Jenkins to you just now as I pass."
She eyed me somewhat closely again; but the feeling flew off.
"Do so--do," she replied; and I left her.
As I proceeded out to the main door, I passed the small room where
Louisa Milford still sat, with the effect of the extraordinary scene
that had taken place between her and the young man called Stanford
pressing on her bosom. I stood a moment, and heard distinctly her deep
sobs and stifled moans. Her sentiments were beautiful, her conduct
noble: she would sacrifice twenty thousand pounds to avoid giving the
aunt she loved a moment's uneasiness; and she had resisted the
impassioned importunities of a lover, who was suspended between beggary
and affluence, and who had adroitly addressed himself to the young heart
of love, as well as to the immature judgment of youth. I had no liberty
to say one word to her of her aunt's intentions; yet I had for some time
resolved to communicate to her the true state of her relative's health,
with an injunction to keep the fearful nature of the disease a secret
from the patient. I knocked at the door, and was requested to walk in.
She was hurriedly occupied in drying up her tears, and removing the
signs of grief.
"You have been weeping, Miss Milford," I said; "is it for your aunt?"
"Forbid that I should require to weep for her!" she cried, starting, as
if stung with pain. "I cannot bear the idea of that woman being in
danger. I have watched your eye daily, and have read in it fearful
things; but I will comfort her; she shall never know that there is
danger near. I will ward off the sad thought; and oh! sir, for mercy's
sake, co-operate with me in my love, while you try to save her from the
danger, the thought of which she shall never know!"
The remembrance of what had passed a few minutes before between her and
her lover, brought out the full effect of the purity of thought that
dictated her impassioned words. I surveyed her for a moment with
admiration.
"I did not think my _professional_ eye was so easily read, Miss
Milford," I replied. "You have read it correctly. Your aunt cannot live.
I have thought it my duty to inform you of this. Her complaint is in the
region of the heart, and she will likely die in an instant."
She stood for a moment pale and motionless, as if her heart had suddenly
ceased its functions. A slow heaving of the bosom showed the approach of
a paroxysm of grief; and I trembled lest the sounds should reach the
patient's room. I pointed in the direction silently. She understood me;
and the strongest workings of nature were overcome by the strength of
her fear to cause pain to her she loved. She struggled against the
rising passion, and, turning to me, fell suddenly at my feet, and held
up her clasped hands in the direction of my countenance.
"And you will not tell her?" she cried, while struggling sobs impeded
her speech; "no, no, pity demands it, and I pray for it--let her live in
the hope of life! Say, good sir, for Heaven's sake, that you will
conceal it from her, and from all others. None shall know it from me--I
will die rather than divulge it. She will thus be happy to the end. She
requires no preparation--she is spotless--pure as the child unborn; and
as she has lived, so shall she die!"
"It is not my intention to communicate it to her," replied I.
"Ah! thanks, thanks, good sir," she replied, in the same impassioned
voice. "Bless you--bless you!"
"But this ignorance, Miss Milford," said I, "prevents a settlement of a
patient's worldly affairs."
"If that settlement, in the case of my aunt," replied she, fervently,
and turning up her eyes to heaven, "is to be purchased by one moment of
pain to her, let Augustus Germain take all."
"Extraordinary sentiment!" muttered I--"extraordinary being!" I left her
to her grief, and proceeded to the attorney's house. He was at home, and
promised to wait on Mrs Germain that day. He called afterwards, and told
me that the will would be ready next evening at seven, when I was
requested to attend to witness it, along with him. I attended
accordingly. The lady was in her usual state of spirits. She sat up on
the couch, arrayed in a superb undress. Miss Milford was not present. I
observed her in her own room, as I passed, with Stanford sitting by her,
holding one of her hands. The attorney, and one of his clerks, and
myself, were the only persons present besides the invalid.
"I am dying to hear a will, Mr Jenkins," said the patient, laughing. "I
don't think I ever heard one in my life; for my husband's settlement was
a contract of marriage, and I fear there is _some_ difference between
the two papers."
Mr Jenkins read the settlement.
"Will you not allow me a glass of wine, doctor?" resumed the invalid, in
the same strain. "It may steady my hand. I declare I am as nervous as a
young bride."
I poured out a glass of her old burgundy, and gave it to her.
"Here is to my own health first!" said she--"for, you know, I'm an
invalid; and, secondly, here is to you all, and may you never be worse
than I am until you come to die!"
She took up the pen and began to write her name. I looked over her
shoulder. She had written Margaret Germ--and the pen was quivering in
her hand. She uttered a scream, and fell back--a corpse. In an instant,
Louisa and Stanford rushed into the room.
"Is she dead?" cried the attorney. "The will is not signed. It wants
three letters. It is useless."
"She is gone," replied I, "for ever."
Louisa threw herself upon the body of her aunt. Stanford looked on like
a statue of marble. The scene was heartrending; for the devoted girl
clung with such force to the dead body, that it was with difficulty I
could get her detached. The loss of the L20,000 was to her nothing. She
did not even hear--at least she understood not the writer, when he cried
out that the will wanted three letters, and was void. Her whole soul was
occupied with the engrossing idea that her aunt was dead; yet so painful
was the thought, that she could not bear to hear the truth, and cried
with a loud voice on the dead body to answer her with one word of
consolation. All this time, Stanford fixed his eye on the fragment of
the name to the will. The three letters were worth a fortune.
"Heavens!" I heard him mutter, "is it so? Are my fears realised, and in
this dreadful form? Hope on the very brink of being realised, swallowed
by the fell demon of despair!"
Louisa was carried out senseless, and Stanford rushed out of the room
like a maniac. The dead body was spread out; the will was rolled up in a
scroll; the writer went away; and I sought home with eyes filled with
tears.
I afterwards learned that the brother came in as heir. Louisa was,
indeed, a beggar; but Stanford married her. They are yet poor, and may
remain so for life.
THE GLASS BACK.
I have already laid before the public one well-authenticated case of a
false conception of identity, arising from the disease called
hypochondria. In that case, as well as in most of the others generally
met with, the supposed change of identity that takes place is complete,
extending to the whole body, which is imagined to pass into a new form
of being, different from man, and often into a piece of matter not
imbued with life or motion at all. Of this latter case, by far the best
known transmutation is that into some very brittle commodity, such as
glass; and this is not to be wondered at, even amidst the darkness of
our ignorance of the secret workings of those extraordinary changes
which seem to shame even the invention of Ovid; for the idea or fantasy,
in that case, is only a peculiar type of the feeling of the nervous
apprehension or terror, which is the peculiar pathognomonic symptom of
the disease itself. It is not difficult to suppose that, when the heart
is filled with fear of personal injury, and yet the eye surveys no cause
of danger, the mind itself will supply imaginary causes--and this
accordingly we find to be the case; neither does it seem to defy our _a
priori_ conceptions, that while imaginary objects of detrimental
efficacy shall be conjured up from the depths of a dark fancy, a
corresponding notion of peculiar brittleness in the body itself shall be
generated, to give plausibility to the pre-existing apprehension of
serious evil. Indeed, the two seem to be counterparts of each other; and
we have only to proceed a step further, to the species of brittleness or
liability to detriment, to come to that extraordinary conception, which
almost every doctor of extensive practice has witnessed once or twice in
his life--that the body is composed of glass, and therefore in continual
danger of being cracked or broken to pieces, from the appulse of objects
that are every day impinging upon us without doing us any harm. The
frequency of the "glass man" is therefore not a matter of very great
wonder to a philosophical mind, after the casual condition of the change
is admitted. The case has so often occurred, that it now excites little
curiosity; but I question much, if the case of a fancied _partial_
transmutation of the flesh into glass may not, as well from its rarity
as its grotesqueness, claim a greater share of interest from the
faculty, and from the general reader; and when I state that the instance
I have to record was witnessed and studied by myself, with a view to the
interests of science--a fact of much importance in all reports of
extraordinary conditions of human nature--I need say no more in
recommendation of it to the attention of the public.
The unhappy subject of the case was a poor man, called Patrick G----, by
trade a tailor--a profession, by the way, which is more productive of
hypochondria than any other with which I am acquainted, arising,
doubtless, from the sedentary habits of the individuals, combined with
their irregular modes of living. I have always noticed a peculiar
_outre_ character in the ideas and feelings of people inclined to
hypochondria; and those who have been permitted to enter the
_penetralia_ of the workshop where the _board_ is covered with these
unfortunate beings, will justify the remark, by their experience of the
strange sayings, grotesque art, and recondite humour, to be found in the
peculiar atmosphere of that temple of taste. I make this allusion, of
course, with a scientific view, as elucidating a fine point in
psychology, and not in the slightest degree influenced by a love of the
mere garbage of the food of an ill-timed curiosity. The peculiarity of
thought and feeling, incidental to this class, might easily have been
discovered in the individual who was so unfortunate as to require my
aid; and all his physical appearances would have justified the
anticipation of the peculiarity, before he opened his mouth. His
complexion was so decidedly what we call saturnine, that it approached
to the colour of green. He was at all times excessively irritable, so
much so that he was often attacked with spasmodic affections; and at
these times he was so easily acted upon by slight and trifling external
causes, that his wife, a very sober and decent woman, required to
observe the greatest caution in conducting those affairs of her domestic
establishment which interfered with either his mind or body. If he was
not in this state of irritability, he was sure to be under the power of
an extreme rigidity of solids, and torpor of the nervous system,
accompanied by their usual concomitant of melancholy, which suggested
even a _bizarrerie_ of thought quite different from that of ordinary
men. I thought the seat of his disease was the spleen, in consequence of
finding an enlargement of that organ; but I afterwards came to be
satisfied that his liver, too, was deranged--an opinion very well
justified by what afterwards befel him.
The symptoms I have mentioned continued in the man for a period of a
year and a-half; but an aggravation of them became soon thereafter
apparent, in a very marked increase of his melancholy, accompanied by a
shaking nervousness on being approached by any heavy article, subject to
movement. When forced out by his wife for the benefit of his health, he
kept the side of the wall, shook at the risk of a jostle, as if a push
or drive would have killed him, and ran into closes and avenues, to be
out of the reach of carriages that were steadily keeping the middle of
the high-road. I have observed these symptoms (to us well known) in
very aggravated diseases of the stomach, without very marked derangement
of the neighbouring organs; and calmed the fears of his wife, by stating
that they would probably abate, as the medicines I gave him (chiefly
tonics) began to operate upon his system. I had, notwithstanding, my
fears that a deeper type of hypochondria was on the eve of exhibiting
itself--an opinion formed chiefly from the study of his eye, which was
getting daily heavier and gloomier, more turned to the angle of the
orbit, and filled with morbid terror, on the approach of any moving
thing, however innocuous. To test further the truth of my deduction, I
gave him a gentle push aside, and observed that he shrank as if he had
been stung by an adder, retreating back from me, and eyeing me with
suspicion and dread, as if I had been about to kill him. He was now, I
suspected, on the eve of falling into one of two positions, depending
upon the temperament of his mind. He would either (as happens with
people of an imaginative turn) create fanciful objects of fear that
might do him bodily injury, retaining his conception of personal
identity unimpaired, or he would pass into the false conviction of being
made of some tender substance, capable of being injured by the approach
of external objects, but retaining otherwise his conceptions of external
things entire--a result more common to minds of a sedate, phlegmatic
kind.
My fears turned out too true. The next time I visited him, I was met by
his wife in the passage, who said she wished to speak a few words to me
before I entered. She whispered that she feared her husband had entirely
lost his senses--for that, on the day previous, he had gone to bed,
where he had lain ever since in the same position--_on his face_; and
yet, so far as she could ascertain, there was nothing the matter with
his back. When she asked him why he lay in that extraordinary position,
he turned up a piteous eye in her face, and replied, with a sigh that
came from the deepest part of his chest, that she would know that soon
enough, requesting her, for the sake of Heaven's mercy and a wife's
love, not to touch him, and to keep the bedclothes as light upon him as
it was ever, ever in her power to do. I could not, even by the power of
anticipation, derived from an ample experience of diseases of this sort,
divine the peculiarity of this patient's complaint; but I was soon to
have sufficient evidence to unravel the mystery.
On going forward to him, I observed that he was carefully laid on his
face, with just so much of his left eye exposed as to serve for a watch
over his body, and exhibit the apprehension which filled his soul, and
engrossed every other feeling.
"Why in this position?" said I. "The back is the resting-place of
patients. Turn, and you will experience the truth of what I say."
"Turn!--oh, that I could!" said he; "but, alas, alas! I dare not; I dare
not." And he accompanied his words with a peculiar nervous glance,
indicating great uneasiness and fear.
"Why?" rejoined I.
"Ah, sir," he cried, in a choking voice, "I must keep this side
uppermost. Glass is brittle, very brittle. I dare not turn; the
crash--ay, sir, the crash--would be tremendous. I would be in a hundred
pieces in a moment. Dreadful thought!--Do not touch me, for Heaven's
sake! approach me not. It is brittle, brittle--ah, very, very brittle!"
These words he accompanied with the same glance of intense fear. I saw
at once where the secret lay; but the poor wife stared with glaring
eyes, as if she had seen a spectre. She understood nothing; but she
watched her husband's eye, and she had never seen there such a wild
light before. Argument in such cases is altogether _hors d'oeuvre_, or
rather it does much injury, and my course lay in a direction entirely
opposite. I had first the precise vitreous locality to discover, which
could be done only by an expression of belief of his extraordinary
condition.
"Calm yourself," said I; "we will deal with you quietly. Which is the
dangerous part?"
I laid my hand between his shoulders, and the bedclothes shook with the
tremor of his limbs.