The Magic Skin

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After spending about half an hour over taking in some sort the measure
of the patient and the complaint, much as a tailor measures a young
man for a coat when he orders his wedding outfit, the authorities
uttered several commonplaces, and even talked of politics. Then they
decided to go into Raphael's study to exchange their ideas and frame
their verdict.

"May I not be present during the discussion, gentlemen?" Valentin had
asked them, but Brisset and Maugredie protested against this, and, in
spite of their patient's entreaties, declined altogether to deliberate
in his presence.

Raphael gave way before their custom, thinking that he could slip into
a passage adjoining, whence he could easily overhear the medical
conference in which the three professors were about to engage.

"Permit me, gentlemen," said Brisset, as they entered, "to give you my
own opinion at once. I neither wish to force it upon you nor to have
it discussed. In the first place, it is unbiased, concise, and based
on an exact similarity that exists between one of my own patients and
the subject that we have been called in to examine; and, moreover, I
am expected at my hospital. The importance of the case that demands my
presence there will excuse me for speaking the first word. The subject
with which we are concerned has been exhausted in an equal degree by
intellectual labors--what did he set about, Horace?" he asked of the
young doctor.

"A 'Theory of the Will,'"

"The devil! but that's a big subject. He is exhausted, I say, by too
much brain-work, by irregular courses, and by the repeated use of too
powerful stimulants. Violent exertion of body and mind has demoralized
the whole system. It is easy, gentlemen, to recognize in the symptoms
of the face and body generally intense irritation of the stomach, an
affection of the great sympathetic nerve, acute sensibility of the
epigastric region, and contraction of the right and left
hypochondriac. You have noticed, too, the large size and prominence of
the liver. M. Bianchon has, besides, constantly watched the patient,
and he tells us that digestion is troublesome and difficult. Strictly
speaking, there is no stomach left, and so the man has disappeared.
The brain is atrophied because the man digests no longer. The
progressive deterioration wrought in the epigastric region, the seat
of vitality, has vitiated the whole system. Thence, by continuous
fevered vibrations, the disorder has reached the brain by means of the
nervous plexus, hence the excessive irritation in that organ. There is
monomania. The patient is burdened with a fixed idea. That piece of
skin really contracts, to his way of thinking; very likely it always
has been as we have seen it; but whether it contracts or no, that
thing is for him just like the fly that some Grand Vizier or other had
on his nose. If you put leeches at once on the epigastrium, and reduce
the irritation in that part, which is the very seat of man's life, and
if you diet the patient, the monomania will leave him. I will say no
more to Dr. Bianchon; he should be able to grasp the whole treatment
as well as the details. There may be, perhaps, some complication of
the disease--the bronchial tubes, possibly, may be also inflamed; but
I believe that treatment for the intestinal organs is very much more
important and necessary, and more urgently required than for the
lungs. Persistent study of abstract matters, and certain violent
passions, have induced serious disorders in that vital mechanism.
However, we are in time to set these conditions right. Nothing is too
seriously affected. You will easily get your friend round again," he
remarked to Bianchon.

"Our learned colleague is taking the effect for the cause," Cameristus
replied. "Yes, the changes that he has observed so keenly certainly
exist in the patient; but it is not the stomach that, by degrees, has
set up nervous action in the system, and so affected the brain, like a
hole in a window pane spreading cracks round about it. It took a blow
of some kind to make a hole in the window; who gave the blow? Do we
know that? Have we investigated the patient's case sufficiently? Are
we acquainted with all the events of his life?

"The vital principle, gentlemen," he continued, "the Archeus of Van
Helmont, is affected in his case--the very essence and centre of life
is attacked. The divine spark, the transitory intelligence which holds
the organism together, which is the source of the will, the
inspiration of life, has ceased to regulate the daily phenomena of the
mechanism and the functions of every organ; thence arise all the
complications which my learned colleague has so thoroughly
appreciated. The epigastric region does not affect the brain but the
brain affects the epigastric region. No," he went on, vigorously
slapping his chest, "no, I am not a stomach in the form of a man. No,
everything does not lie there. I do not feel that I have the courage
to say that if the epigastric region is in good order, everything else
is in a like condition----

"We cannot trace," he went on more mildly, "to one physical cause the
serious disturbances that supervene in this or that subject which has
been dangerously attacked, nor submit them to a uniform treatment. No
one man is like another. We have each peculiar organs, differently
affected, diversely nourished, adapted to perform different functions,
and to induce a condition necessary to the accomplishment of an order
of things which is unknown to us. The sublime will has so wrought that
a little portion of the great All is set within us to sustain the
phenomena of living; in every man it formulates itself distinctly,
making each, to all appearance, a separate individual, yet in one
point co-existent with the infinite cause. So we ought to make a
separate study of each subject, discover all about it, find out in
what its life consists, and wherein its power lies. From the softness
of a wet sponge to the hardness of pumice-stone there are infinite
fine degrees of difference. Man is just like that. Between the
sponge-like organizations of the lymphatic and the vigorous iron muscles
of such men as are destined for a long life, what a margin for errors for
the single inflexible system of a lowering treatment to commit; a
system that reduces the capacities of the human frame, which you
always conclude have been over-excited. Let us look for the origin of
the disease in the mental and not in the physical viscera. A doctor is
an inspired being, endowed by God with a special gift--the power to
read the secrets of vitality; just as the prophet has received the
eyes that foresee the future, the poet his faculty of evoking nature,
and the musician the power of arranging sounds in an harmonious order
that is possibly a copy of an ideal harmony on high."

"There is his everlasting system of medicine, arbitrary, monarchical,
and pious," muttered Brisset.

"Gentlemen," Maugredie broke in hastily, to distract attention from
Brisset's comment, "don't let us lose sight of the patient."

"What is the good of science?" Raphael moaned. "Here is my recovery
halting between a string of beads and a rosary of leeches, between
Dupuytren's bistoury and Prince Hohenlohe's prayer. There is Maugredie
suspending his judgment on the line that divides facts from words,
mind from matter. Man's 'it is,' and 'it is not,' is always on my
track; it is the _Carymary Carymara_ of Rabelais for evermore: my
disorder is spiritual, _Carymary_, or material, _Carymara_. Shall I live?
They have no idea. Planchette was more straightforward with me, at any
rate, when he said, 'I do not know.'"

Just then Valentin heard Maugredie's voice.

"The patient suffers from monomania; very good, I am quite of that
opinion," he said, "but he has two hundred thousand a year;
monomaniacs of that kind are very uncommon. As for knowing whether his
epigastric region has affected his brain, or his brain his epigastric
region, we shall find that out, perhaps, whenever he dies. But to
resume. There is no disputing the fact that he is ill; some sort of
treatment he must have. Let us leave theories alone, and put leeches
on him, to counteract the nervous and intestinal irritation, as to the
existence of which we all agree; and let us send him to drink the
waters, in that way we shall act on both systems at once. If there
really is tubercular disease, we can hardly expect to save his life;
so that----"

Raphael abruptly left the passage, and went back to his armchair. The
four doctors very soon came out of the study; Horace was the
spokesman.

"These gentlemen," he told him, "have unanimously agreed that leeches
must be applied to the stomach at once, and that both physical and
moral treatment are imperatively needed. In the first place, a
carefully prescribed rule of diet, so as to soothe the internal
irritation"--here Brisset signified his approval; "and in the second,
a hygienic regimen, to set your general condition right. We all,
therefore, recommend you to go to take the waters in Aix in Savoy; or,
if you like it better, at Mont Dore in Auvergne; the air and the
situation are both pleasanter in Savoy than in the Cantal, but you
will consult your own taste."

Here it was Cameristus who nodded assent.

"These gentlemen," Bianchon continued, "having recognized a slight
affection of the respiratory organs, are agreed as to the utility of
the previous course of treatment that I have prescribed. They think
that there will be no difficulty about restoring you to health, and
that everything depends upon a wise and alternate employment of these
various means. And----"

"And that is the cause of the milk in the cocoanut," said Raphael,
with a smile, as he led Horace into his study to pay the fees for this
useless consultation.

"Their conclusions are logical," the young doctor replied. "Cameristus
feels, Brisset examines, Maugredie doubts. Has not man a soul, a body,
and an intelligence? One of these three elemental constituents always
influences us more or less strongly; there will always be the personal
element in human science. Believe me, Raphael, we effect no cures; we
only assist them. Another system--the use of mild remedies while
Nature exerts her powers--lies between the extremes of theory of
Brisset and Cameristus, but one ought to have known the patient for
some ten years or so to obtain a good result on these lines. Negation
lies at the back of all medicine, as in every other science. So
endeavor to live wholesomely; try a trip to Savoy; the best course is,
and always will be, to trust to Nature."

It was a month later, on a fine summer-like evening, that several
people, who were taking the waters at Aix, returned from the promenade
and met together in the salons of the Club. Raphael remained alone by
a window for a long time. His back was turned upon the gathering, and
he himself was deep in those involuntary musings in which thoughts
arise in succession and fade away, shaping themselves indistinctly,
passing over us like thin, almost colorless clouds. Melancholy is
sweet to us then, and delight is shadowy, for the soul is half asleep.
Valentin gave himself up to this life of sensations; he was steeping
himself in the warm, soft twilight, enjoying the pure air with the
scent of the hills in it, happy in that he felt no pain, and had
tranquilized his threatening Magic Skin at last. It grew cooler as the
red glow of the sunset faded on the mountain peaks; he shut the window
and left his place.

"Will you be so kind as not to close the windows, sir?" said an old
lady; "we are being stifled----"

The peculiarly sharp and jarring tones in which the phrase was uttered
grated on Raphael's ears; it fell on them like an indiscreet remark
let slip by some man in whose friendship we would fain believe, a word
which reveals unsuspected depths of selfishness and destroys some
pleasing sentimental illusion of ours. The Marquis glanced, with the
cool inscrutable expression of a diplomatist, at the old lady, called
a servant, and, when he came, curtly bade him:

"Open that window."

Great surprise was clearly expressed on all faces at the words. The
whole roomful began to whisper to each other, and turned their eyes
upon the invalid, as though he had given some serious offence.
Raphael, who had never quite managed to rid himself of the bashfulness
of his early youth, felt a momentary confusion; then he shook off his
torpor, exerted his faculties, and asked himself the meaning of this
strange scene.

A sudden and rapid impulse quickened his brain; the past weeks
appeared before him in a clear and definite vision; the reasons for
the feelings he inspired in others stood out for him in relief, like
the veins of some corpse which a naturalist, by some cunningly
contrived injection, has colored so as to show their least
ramifications.

He discerned himself in this fleeting picture; he followed out his own
life in it, thought by thought, day after day. He saw himself, not
without astonishment, an absent gloomy figure in the midst of these
lively folk, always musing over his own fate, always absorbed by his
own sufferings, seemingly impatient of the most harmless chat. He saw
how he had shunned the ephemeral intimacies that travelers are so
ready to establish--no doubt because they feel sure of never meeting
each other again--and how he had taken little heed of those about him.
He saw himself like the rocks without, unmoved by the caresses or the
stormy surgings of the waves.

Then, by a gift of insight seldom accorded, he read the thoughts of
all those about him. The light of a candle revealed the sardonic
profile and yellow cranium of an old man; he remembered now that he
had won from him, and had never proposed that the other should have
his revenge; a little further on he saw a pretty woman, whose lively
advances he had met with frigid coolness; there was not a face there
that did not reproach him with some wrong done, inexplicably to all
appearance, but the real offence in every case lay in some
mortification, some invisible hurt dealt to self-love. He had
unintentionally jarred on all the small susceptibilities of the circle
round about him.

His guests on various occasions, and those to whom he had lent his
horses, had taken offence at his luxurious ways; their ungraciousness
had been a surprise to him; he had spared them further humiliations of
that kind, and they had considered that he looked down upon them, and
had accused him of haughtiness ever since. He could read their inmost
thoughts as he fathomed their natures in this way. Society with its
polish and varnish grew loathsome to him. He was envied and hated for
his wealth and superior ability; his reserve baffled the inquisitive;
his humility seemed like haughtiness to these petty superficial
natures. He guessed the secret unpardonable crime which he had
committed against them; he had overstepped the limits of the
jurisdiction of their mediocrity. He had resisted their inquisitorial
tyranny; he could dispense with their society; and all of them,
therefore, had instinctively combined to make him feel their power,
and to take revenge upon this incipient royalty by submitting him to a
kind of ostracism, and so teaching him that they in their turn could
do without him.

Pity came over him, first of all, at this aspect of mankind, but very
soon he shuddered at the thought of the power that came thus, at will,
and flung aside for him the veil of flesh under which the moral nature
is hidden away. He closed his eyes, so as to see no more. A black
curtain was drawn all at once over this unlucky phantom show of truth;
but still he found himself in the terrible loneliness that surrounds
every power and dominion. Just then a violent fit of coughing seized
him. Far from receiving one single word--indifferent, and meaningless,
it is true, but still containing, among well-bred people brought
together by chance, at least some pretence of civil commiseration--he
now heard hostile ejaculations and muttered complaints. Society there
assembled disdained any pantomime on his account, perhaps because he
had gauged its real nature too well.

"His complaint is contagious."

"The president of the Club ought to forbid him to enter the salon."

"It is contrary to all rules and regulations to cough in that way!"

"When a man is as ill as that, he ought not to come to take the
waters----"

"He will drive me away from the place."

Raphael rose and walked about the rooms to screen himself from their
unanimous execrations. He thought to find a shelter, and went up to a
young pretty lady who sat doing nothing, minded to address some pretty
speeches to her; but as he came towards her, she turned her back upon
him, and pretended to be watching the dancers. Raphael feared lest he
might have made use of the talisman already that evening; and feeling
that he had neither the wish nor the courage to break into the
conversation, he left the salon and took refuge in the billiard-room.
No one there greeted him, nobody spoke to him, no one sent so much as
a friendly glance in his direction. His turn of mind, naturally
meditative, had discovered instinctively the general grounds and
reasons for the aversion he inspired. This little world was obeying,
unconsciously perhaps, the sovereign law which rules over polite
society; its inexorable nature was becoming apparent in its entirety
to Raphael's eyes. A glance into the past showed it to him, as a type
completely realized in Foedora.

He would no more meet with sympathy here for his bodily ills than he
had received it at her hands for the distress in his heart. The
fashionable world expels every suffering creature from its midst, just
as the body of a man in robust health rejects any germ of disease. The
world holds suffering and misfortune in abhorrence; it dreads them
like the plague; it never hesitates between vice and trouble, for vice
is a luxury. Ill-fortune may possess a majesty of its own, but society
can belittle it and make it ridiculous by an epigram. Society draws
caricatures, and in this way flings in the teeth of fallen kings the
affronts which it fancies it has received from them; society, like the
Roman youth at the circus, never shows mercy to the fallen gladiator;
mockery and money are its vital necessities. "Death to the weak!" That
is the oath taken by this kind of Equestrian order, instituted in
their midst by all the nations of the world; everywhere it makes for
the elevation of the rich, and its motto is deeply graven in hearts
that wealth has turned to stone, or that have been reared in
aristocratic prejudices.

Assemble a collection of school-boys together. That will give you a
society in miniature, a miniature which represents life more truly,
because it is so frank and artless; and in it you will always find
poor isolated beings, relegated to some place in the general
estimations between pity and contempt, on account of their weakness
and suffering. To these the Evangel promises heaven hereafter. Go
lower yet in the scale of organized creation. If some bird among its
fellows in the courtyard sickens, the others fall upon it with their
beaks, pluck out its feathers, and kill it. The whole world, in
accordance with its character of egotism, brings all its severity to
bear upon wretchedness that has the hardihood to spoil its
festivities, and to trouble its joys.

Any sufferer in mind or body, any helpless or poor man, is a pariah.
He had better remain in his solitude; if he crosses the boundary-line,
he will find winter everywhere; he will find freezing cold in other
men's looks, manners, words, and hearts; and lucky indeed is he if he
does not receive an insult where he expected that sympathy would be
expended upon him. Let the dying keep to their bed of neglect, and age
sit lonely by its fireside. Portionless maids, freeze and burn in your
solitary attics. If the world tolerates misery of any kind, it is to
turn it to account for its own purposes, to make some use of it,
saddle and bridle it, put a bit in its mouth, ride it about, and get
some fun out of it.

Crotchety spinsters, ladies' companions, put a cheerful face upon it,
endure the humors of your so-called benefactress, carry her lapdogs
for her; you have an English poodle for your rival, and you must seek
to understand the moods of your patroness, and amuse her, and--keep
silence about yourselves. As for you, unblushing parasite, uncrowned
king of unliveried servants, leave your real character at home, let
your digestion keep pace with your host's laugh when he laughs, mingle
your tears with his, and find his epigrams amusing; if you want to
relieve your mind about him, wait till he is ruined. That is the way
the world shows its respect for the unfortunate; it persecutes them,
or slays them in the dust.

Such thoughts as these welled up in Raphael's heart with the
suddenness of poetic inspiration. He looked around him, and felt the
influence of the forbidding gloom that society breathes out in order
to rid itself of the unfortunate; it nipped his soul more effectually
than the east wind grips the body in December. He locked his arms over
his chest, set his back against the wall, and fell into a deep
melancholy. He mused upon the meagre happiness that this depressing
way of living can give. What did it amount to? Amusement with no
pleasure in it, gaiety without gladness, joyless festivity, fevered
dreams empty of all delight, firewood or ashes on the hearth without a
spark of flame in them. When he raised his head, he found himself
alone, all the billiard players had gone.

"I have only to let them know my power to make them worship my
coughing fits," he said to himself, and wrapped himself against the
world in the cloak of his contempt.

Next day the resident doctor came to call upon him, and took an
anxious interest in his health. Raphael felt a thrill of joy at the
friendly words addressed to him. The doctor's face, to his thinking,
wore an expression that was kind and pleasant; the pale curls of his
wig seemed redolent of philanthropy; the square cut of his coat, the
loose folds of his trousers, his big Quaker-like shoes, everything
about him down to the powder shaken from his queue and dusted in a
circle upon his slightly stooping shoulders, revealed an apostolic
nature, and spoke of Christian charity and of the self-sacrifice of a
man, who, out of sheer devotion to his patients, had compelled himself
to learn to play whist and tric-trac so well that he never lost money
to any of them.

"My Lord Marquis," said he, after a long talk with Raphael, "I can
dispel your uneasiness beyond all doubt. I know your constitution well
enough by this time to assure you that the doctors in Paris, whose
great abilities I know, are mistaken as to the nature of your
complaint. You can live as long as Methuselah, my Lord Marquis,
accidents only excepted. Your lungs are as sound as a blacksmith's
bellows, your stomach would put an ostrich to the blush; but if you
persist in living at high altitude, you are running the risk of a
prompt interment in consecrated soil. A few words, my Lord Marquis,
will make my meaning clear to you.

"Chemistry," he began, "has shown us that man's breathing is a real
process of combustion, and the intensity of its action varies
according to the abundance or scarcity of the phlogistic element
stored up by the organism of each individual. In your case, the
phlogistic, or inflammatory element is abundant; if you will permit me
to put it so, you generate superfluous oxygen, possessing as you do
the inflammatory temperament of a man destined to experience strong
emotions. While you breath the keen, pure air that stimulates life in
men of lymphatic constitution, you are accelerating an expenditure of
vitality already too rapid. One of the conditions for existence for
you is the heavier atmosphere of the plains and valleys. Yes, the
vital air for a man consumed by his genius lies in the fertile
pasture-lands of Germany, at Toplitz or Baden-Baden. If England is not
obnoxious to you, its misty climate would reduce your fever; but the
situation of our baths, a thousand feet above the level of the
Mediterranean, is dangerous for you. That is my opinion at least," he
said, with a deprecatory gesture, "and I give it in opposition to our
interests, for, if you act upon it, we shall unfortunately lose you."

But for these closing words of his, the affable doctor's seeming
good-nature would have completely won Raphael over; but he was too
profoundly observant not to understand the meaning of the tone, the
look and gesture that accompanied that mild sarcasm, not to see that
the little man had been sent on this errand, no doubt, by a flock of
his rejoicing patients. The florid-looking idlers, tedious old women,
nomad English people, and fine ladies who had given their husbands the
slip, and were escorted hither by their lovers--one and all were in a
plot to drive away a wretched, feeble creature to die, who seemed
unable to hold out against a daily renewed persecution! Raphael
accepted the challenge, he foresaw some amusement to be derived from
their manoeuvres.