Doctor Pascal

During all this time Pascal suffered terribly, without making any complaint. He had sunk into a dull distrust, imagining that he was still being watched, and that if they seemed to leave him at peace it was only in order to concoct in secret the darkest plots. His uneasiness increased, even, and he expected every day some catastrophe to happen – the earth suddenly to open and swallow up his papers, La Souleiade itself to be razed to the ground, carried away bodily, scattered to the winds.

The persecution against his thought, against his moral and intellectual life, in thus hiding itself, and so rendering him helpless to defend himself, became so intolerable to him that he went to bed every night in a fever. He would often start and turn round suddenly, thinking he was going to surprise the enemy behind him engaged in some piece of treachery, to find nothing there but the shadow of his own fears. At other times, seized by some suspicion, he would remain on the watch for hours together, hidden, behind his blinds, or lying in wait in a passage; but not a soul stirred, he heard nothing but the violent beating of his heart. His fears kept him in a state of constant agitation; he never went to bed at night without visiting every room; he no longer slept, or, if he did, he would waken with a start at the slightest noise, ready to defend himself.

And what still further aggravated Pascal’s sufferings was the constant, the ever more bitter thought that the wound was inflicted upon him by the only creature he loved in the world, the adored Clotilde, whom for twenty years he had seen grow in beauty and in grace, whose life had hitherto bloomed like a beautiful flower, perfuming his. She, great God! for whom his heart was full of affection, whom he had never analyzed, she, who had become his joy, his courage, his hope, in whose young life he lived over again. When she passed by, with her delicate neck, so round, so fresh, he was invigorated, bathed in health and joy, as at the coming of spring.

His whole life, besides, explained this invasion, this subjugation of his being by the young girl who had entered into his heart while she was still a little child, and who, as she grew up, had gradually taken possession of the whole place. Since he had settled at Plassans, he had led a blest existence, wrapped up in his books, far from women. The only passion he was ever known to have had, was his love for the lady who had died, whose finger tips he had never kissed. He had not lived; he had within him a reserve of youthfulness, of vigor, whose surging flood now clamored rebelliously at the menace of approaching age. He would have become attached to an animal, a stray dog that he had chanced to pick up in the street, and that had licked his hand. And it was this child whom he loved, all at once become an adorable woman, who now distracted him, who tortured him by her hostility.

Pascal, so gay, so kind, now became insupportably gloomy and harsh. He grew angry at the slightest word; he would push aside the astonished Martine, who would look up at him with the submissive eyes of a beaten animal. From morning till night he went about the gloomy house, carrying his misery about with him, with so forbidding a countenance that no one ventured to speak to him.

He never took Clotilde with him now on his visits, but went alone. And thus it was that he returned home one afternoon, his mind distracted because of an accident which had happened; having on his conscience, as a physician, the death of a man.

He had gone to give a hypodermic injection to Lafouasse, the tavern keeper, whose ataxia had within a short time made such rapid progress that he regarded him as doomed. But, notwithstanding, Pascal still fought obstinately against the disease, continuing the treatment, and as ill luck would have it, on this day the little syringe had caught up at the bottom of the vial an impure particle, which had escaped the filter. Immediately a drop of blood appeared; to complete his misfortune, he had punctured a vein. He was at once alarmed, seeing the tavern keeper turn pale and gasp for breath, while large drops of cold perspiration broke out upon his face. Then he understood; death came as if by a stroke of lightning, the lips turning blue, the face black. It was an embolism; he had nothing to blame but the insufficiency of his preparations, his still rude method. No doubt Lafouasse had been doomed. He could not, perhaps, have lived six months longer, and that in the midst of atrocious sufferings, but the brutal fact of this terrible death was none the less there, and what despairing regret, what rage against impotent and murderous science, and what a shock to his faith! He returned home, livid, and did not make his appearance again until the following day, after having remained sixteen hours shut up in his room, lying in a semi-stupor on the bed, across which he had thrown himself, dressed as he was.

On the afternoon of this day Clotilde, who was sitting beside him in the study, sewing, ventured to break the oppressive silence. She looked up, and saw him turning over the leaves of a book wearily, searching for some information which he was unable to find.

“Master, are you ill? Why do you not tell me, if you are. I would take care of you.”

He kept his eyes bent upon the book, and muttered:

“What does it matter to you whether I am ill or not? I need no one to take care of me.”

She resumed, in a conciliating voice:

“If you have troubles, and can tell them to me, it would perhaps be a relief to you to do so. Yesterday you came in looking so sad. You must not allow yourself to be cast down in that way. I have spent a very anxious night. I came to your door three times to listen, tormented by the idea that you were suffering.”

Gently as she spoke, her words were like the cut of a whip. In his weak and nervous condition a sudden access of rage made him push away the book and rise up trembling.

“So you spy upon me, then. I cannot even retire to my room without people coming to glue their ears to the walls. Yes, you listen even to the beatings of my heart. You watch for my death, to pillage and burn everything here.”

His voice rose and all his unjust suffering vented itself in complaints and threats.

“I forbid you to occupy yourself about me. Is there nothing else that you have to say to me? Have you reflected? Can you put your hand in mine loyally, and say to me that we are in accord?”

She did not answer. She only continued to look at him with her large clear eyes, frankly declaring that she would not surrender yet, while he, exasperated more and more by this attitude, lost all self-control.

“Go away, go away,” he stammered, pointing to the door. “I do not wish you to remain near me. I do not wish to have enemies near me. I do not wish you to remain near me to drive me mad!”

She rose, very pale, and went at once out of the room, without looking behind, carrying her work with her.

During the month which followed, Pascal took refuge in furious and incessant work. He now remained obstinately, for whole days at a time, alone in the study, sometimes passing even the nights there, going over old documents, to revise all his works on heredity. It seemed as if a sort of frenzy had seized him to assure himself of the legitimacy of his hopes, to force science to give him the certainty that humanity could be remade – made a higher, a healthy humanity. He no longer left the house, he abandoned his patients even, and lived among his papers, without air or exercise. And after a month of this overwork, which exhausted him without appeasing his domestic torments, he fell into such a state of nervous exhaustion that illness, for some time latent, declared itself at last with alarming violence.

Pascal, when he rose in the morning, felt worn out with fatigue, wearier and less refreshed than he had been on going to bed the night before. He constantly had pains all over his body; his limbs failed him, after five minutes’ walk; the slightest exertion tired him; the least movement caused him intense pain. At times the floor seemed suddenly to sway beneath his feet. He had a constant buzzing in his ears, flashes of light dazzled his eyes. He took a loathing for wine, he had no longer any appetite, and his digestion was seriously impaired. Then, in the midst of the apathy of his constantly increasing idleness he would have sudden fits of aimless activity. The equilibrium was destroyed, he had at times outbreaks of nervous irritability, without any cause. The slightest emotion brought tears to his eyes. Finally, he would shut himself up in his room, and give way to paroxysms of despair so violent that he would sob for hours at a time, without any immediate cause of grief, overwhelmed simply by the immense sadness of things.

In the early part of December Pascal had a severe attack of neuralgia. Violent pains in the bones of the skull made him feel at times as if his head must split. Old Mme. Rougon, who had been informed of his illness, came to inquire after her son. But she went straight to the kitchen, wishing to have a talk with Martine first. The latter, with a heart-broken and terrified air, said to her that monsieur must certainly be going mad; and she told her of his singular behavior, the continual tramping about in his room, the locking of all the drawers, the rounds which he made from the top to the bottom of the house, until two o’clock in the morning. Tears filled her eyes and she at last hazarded the opinion that monsieur must be possessed with a devil, and that it would be well to notify the cure of St. Saturnin.

“So good a man,” she said, “a man for whom one would let one’s self be cut in pieces! How unfortunate it is that one cannot get him to go to church, for that would certainly cure him at once.”

Clotilde, who had heard her grandmother’s voice, entered at this moment. She, too, wandered through the empty rooms, spending most of her time in the deserted apartment on the ground floor. She did not speak, however, but only listened with her thoughtful and expectant air.

“Ah, goodday! It is you, my dear. Martine tells me that Pascal is possessed with a devil. That is indeed my opinion also; only the devil is called pride. He thinks that he knows everything. He is Pope and Emperor in one, and naturally it exasperates him when people don’t agree with him.”

She shrugged her shoulders with supreme disdain.

“As for me, all that would only make me laugh if it were not so sad. A fellow who knows nothing about anything; who has always been wrapped up in his books; who has not lived. Put him in a drawing-room, and he would know as little how to act as a new-born babe. And as for women, he does not even know what they are.”

Forgetting to whom she was speaking, a young girl and a servant, she lowered her voice, and said confidentially:

“Well, one pays for being too sensible, too. Neither a wife nor a sweetheart nor anything. That is what has finally turned his brain.”

Clotilde did not move. She only lowered her eyelids slowly over her large thoughtful eyes; then she raised them again, maintaining her impenetrable countenance, unwilling, unable, perhaps, to give expression to what was passing within her. This was no doubt all still confused, a complete evolution, a great change which was taking place, and which she herself did not clearly understand.

“He is upstairs, is he not?” resumed Felicite. “I have come to see him, for this must end; it is too stupid.”

And she went upstairs, while Martine returned to her saucepans, and Clotilde went to wander again through the empty house.

Upstairs in the study Pascal sat seemingly in a stupor, his face bent over a large open book. He could no longer read, the words danced before his eyes, conveying no meaning to his mind. But he persisted, for it was death to him to lose his faculty for work, hitherto so powerful. His mother at once began to scold him, snatching the book from him, and flinging it upon a distant table, crying that when one was sick one should take care of one’s self. He rose with a quick, angry movement, about to order her away as he had ordered Clotilde. Then, by a last effort of the will, he became again deferential.

“Mother, you know that I have never wished to dispute with you. Leave me, I beg of you.”

She did not heed him, but began instead to take him to task about his continual distrust. It was he himself who had given himself a fever, always fancying that he was surrounded by enemies who were setting traps for him, and watching him to rob him. Was there any common sense in imagining that people were persecuting him in that way? And then she accused him of allowing his head to be turned by his discovery, his famous remedy for curing every disease. That was as much as to think himself equal to the good God; which only made it all the more cruel when he found out how mistaken he was. And she mentioned Lafouasse, the man whom he had killed – naturally, she could understand that that had not been very pleasant for him; indeed there was cause enough in it to make him take to his bed.

Pascal, still controlling himself, very pale and with eyes cast on the ground, contented himself with repeating:

“Mother, leave me, I beg of you.”

“No, I won’t leave you,” she cried with the impetuosity which was natural to her, and which her great age had in no wise diminished. “I have come precisely to stir you up a little, to rid you of this fever which is consuming you. No, this cannot continue. I don’t wish that we should again become the talk of the whole town on your account. I wish you to take care of yourself.”

He shrugged his shoulders, and said in a low voice, as if speaking to himself, with an uneasy look, half of conviction, half of doubt:

“I am not ill.”

But Felicite, beside herself, burst out, gesticulating violently:

“Not ill! not ill! Truly, there is no one like a physician for not being able to see himself. Why, my poor boy, every one that comes near you is shocked by your appearance. You are becoming insane through pride and fear!”

This time Pascal raised his head quickly, and looked her straight in the eyes, while she continued:

“This is what I had to tell you, since it seems that no one else would undertake the task. You are old enough to know what you ought to do. You should make an effort to shake off all this; you should think of something else; you should not let a fixed idea take possession of you, especially when you belong to a family like ours. You know it; have sense, and take care of yourself.”

He grew paler than before, looking fixedly at her still, as if he were sounding her, to know what there was of her in him. And he contented himself with answering:

“You are right, mother. I thank you.”

When he was again alone, he dropped into his seat before the table, and tried once more to read his book. But he could not succeed, any more than before, in fixing his attention sufficiently to understand the words, whose letters mingled confusedly together before his eyes. And his mother’s words buzzed in his ears; a vague terror, which had some time before sprung up within him, grew and took shape, haunting him now as an immediate and clearly defined danger. He who two months before had boasted triumphantly of not belonging to the family, was he about to receive the most terrible of contradictions? Ah, this egotistic joy, this intense joy of not belonging to it, was it to give place to the terrible anguish of being struck in his turn? Was he to have the humiliation of seeing the taint revive in him? Was he to be dragged down to the horror of feeling himself in the clutches of the monster of heredity? The sublime idea, the lofty certitude which he had of abolishing suffering, of strengthening man’s will, of making a new and a higher humanity, a healthy humanity, was assuredly only the beginning of the monomania of vanity. And in his bitter complaint of being watched, in his desire to watch the enemies who, he thought, were obstinately bent on his destruction, were easily to be recognized the symptoms of the monomania of suspicion. So then all the diseases of the race were to end in this terrible case – madness within a brief space, then general paralysis, and a dreadful death.

From this day forth Pascal was as if possessed. The state of nervous exhaustion into which overwork and anxiety had thrown him left him an unresisting prey to this haunting fear of madness and death. All the morbid sensations which he felt, his excessive fatigue on rising, the buzzing in his ears, the flashes of light before his eyes, even his attacks of indigestion and his paroxysms of tears, were so many infallible symptoms of the near insanity with which he believed himself threatened. He had completely lost, in his own case, the keen power of diagnosis of the observant physician, and if he still continued to reason about it, it was only to confound and pervert symptoms, under the influence of the moral and physical depression into which he had fallen. He was no longer master of himself; he was mad, so to say, to convince himself hour by hour that he must become so.

All the days of this pale December were spent by him in going deeper and deeper into his malady. Every morning he tried to escape from the haunting subject, but he invariably ended by shutting himself in the study to take up again, in spite of himself, the tangled skein of the day before.