The Mesmerist's Victim

“You cut that head off coldly and skillfully,” said the former. “Have you less emotion when dealing with the quick? Does suffering affect you less than insensibility? Are you more pitiless with living bodies than the dead?”

“No, for it would be a fault, as in an executioner to let himself feel anything. A man would die from being miscut in the limb as surely as though his head were struck off. A good surgeon ought to operate with his hand and not his heart, though he knows in his heart that he is going to give years of life and happiness for the second’s suffering. That is the golden lining to our profession.”

“Yes; but in the living, I hope you meet with the soul?”

“Yes, if you hold that the soul is the moving impulse – the sensitiveness; that I do meet, and it is very troublesome sometimes for it kills more patients than my scalpel.”

Guided by Marat, who would not put aside his ghastly burden, Balsamo was introduced into the operation ward, crowded with the chief surgeon and the students.

The aids brought in a young man, knocked down the previous week by a heavy wagon which had crushed his foot. A hasty operation at that time had not sufficed; mortification had spread and amputation of the leg was necessary. Stretched on the bed of anguish, the poor fellow looked with a terror which would have melted tigers, on the band of eager men who waited for the time of his martyrdom, his death perchance, to study the science of life – the marvellous phenomenon which conceals the gloomy one of death. He seemed to sue from the surgeon and assistants some smile of comfort, but he met indifference on all sides, steel in every eye.

A remnant of courage and manly pride kept him mute, reserving all to try to check the screams which agony would tear from him.

Still, when he felt the kindly heavy hand of the porter on his shoulder, and the aid's arms interlace him like serpents, and heard the operator’s voice saying “Keep up your pluck my brave man!” he ventured to break the stillness by asking in a plaintive tone:

“You are not going to hurt me much?”

“Not at all; be quiet,” replied Marat, with a false smile which might seem sweet to the sufferer, but was ironical to Balsamo, and noting that the latter had seen through him, the young surgeon whispered to him:

“It is a dreadful operation. The bone is splintered and sensitive so as to make any one pity him. He will die of the pain, not the injury; that will make his soul want to fly away.”

“Why operate on him – why not let him die tranquilly?”

“Because it is a surgeon’s duty to attempt a cure when it is impossible.”

“But you say that he will suffer dreadfully on account of his having a soul too tender for his frame? then, why not operate on the soul so that the tranquillity of the one will be the salvation of the other?”

“Just what I have done,” replied Marat, while the patient was tied down. “By my words, I spoke to the soul – to his sensitiveness, what made the Greek philosopher say, ‘Pain, thou art no ill.’ I told him he would not feel much pain, and it is the business of his soul not to feel any. That is the only remedy known up to the present. As for the questions of the soul – lies! why is this deuce of a soul clamped to the body? When I knocked this head off a spell ago, the body said nothing. Yet that was a grave operation enough. But the movement had ceased, sensitiveness was no more and the soul had fled, as you spiritualists say. That is why the head and the body which I severed, made no remonstrance to me. But the body of this unhappy fellow with the soul still in, will be yelling awfully in a little while. Stop up your ears closely, master. For you are sensitive, and your theory will be killed by the shock, until the day when your theory can separate the soul from the body.”

“You believe such separation will never come?” said Balsamo.

“Try, for this is a capital opening.”

“I will; this young man interests me and I do not want him to feel the pain.”

“You are a leader of men,” said Marat, “but you are not a heavenly being, and you cannot prevent the lad from suffering.”

“If he should not suffer, would his recovery be sure?”

“It would be likely, but not sure.”

Balsamo cast an inexpressible look of triumph on the speaker and placing himself before the patient, whose frightened and terror-filled eyes he caught, he said: “Sleep!” not with the mouth solely but with look, will, all the heat of his blood and the fluid electricity in his system.

At this instant the chief surgeon was beginning to feel the injured thigh and point out to the pupils the extent of the ail.

But at this command from the mesmerist, the young man, who had been raised by an assistant, swung a little and let his head sink, while his eyes closed.

“He feels bad,” said Marat; “he loses consciousness.”

“Nay, he sleeps.”

Everybody looked at this stranger whom they took for a lunatic.

Over Marat’s lips flitted a smile of incredulity.

“Does a man usually speak in a swoon?” asked Balsamo. “Question him and he will answer you.”

“I say, young man,” shouted Marat.

“No, there is no need for you to halloo at him,” said Balsamo, “he will hear you in your ordinary voice.”

“Give us an idea what you are doing?”

“I was told to sleep, and I am sleeping,” replied the patient, in a perfectly unruffled voice strongly contrasting with that heard from him shortly before.

All the bystanders stared at one another.

“Now, untie him,” said Balsamo.

“No, you must not do that,” remonstrated the head surgeon, “the operation would be spoilt by the slightest movement.”

“I assure you that he will not stir, and he will do the same: ask him.”

“Can you be left free, my friend?”

“I can.”

“And you promise not to budge?”

“I promise, if I am ordered so.”

“I order you.”

“Upon my word, sir,” said the chief surgeon, “you speak with so much certainty that I am inclined to try the experiment.”

“Do so, and have no fear.”

“Unbind him,” said the surgeon.

As the men obeyed Balsamo went to the head of the couch.

“From this time forward do not stir till I bid you.”

A statue on a tombstone could not be more motionless than the patient after this command.

“Now, sir, proceed with the operation; the patient is properly prepared.”

The surgeon had his steel ready, but he hesitated at the beginning.