The Brotherhood of Consolation

“You should amuse yourself, my child,” said her father.

“Oh yes!” she said; “I have the desire, but should I then have the faculty? My son will be, I hope a magistrate, worthy of his two grandfathers, and he will leave me. What should I do then? If God restores me to life I will dedicate that life to Him – oh! after giving you all you need of it,” she cried, looking tenderly at her father and son. “There are moments, my dear father, when the ideas of Monsieur de Maistre work within me powerfully, and I fancy that I am expiating something.”

“See what it is to read too much!” said the old man, evidently troubled.

“That brave Polish general, my great grandfather, took part, though very innocently, in the partition of Poland.”

“Well, well! now it is Poland!” said Monsieur Bernard.

“How can I help it, papa? my sufferings are infernal; they give me a horror of life, they disgust me with myself. Well, I ask you, have I done anything to deserve them? Such diseases are not a mere derangement of health, they are caused by a perverted organization and – ”

“Sing that national air your poor mother used to sing; Monsieur Godefroid wants to hear it; I have told him about your voice,” said the old man, endeavoring to distract her mind from the current of such thoughts.

Vanda began, in a low and tender voice, to sing a Polish song which held Godefroid dumb with admiration and also with sadness. This melody, which greatly resembles the long drawn out melancholy airs of Brittany, is one of those poems which vibrate in the heart long after the ear has heard them. As he listened, Godefroid looked at Vanda, but he could not endure the ecstatic glance of that fragment of a woman, partially insane, and his eyes wandered to two cords which hung one on each side of the canopy of the bed.

“Ah ha!” laughed Vanda, noticing his look, “do you want to know what those cords are for?”

“Vanda!” said her father, hastily, “calm yourself, my daughter. See! here comes tea. That, monsieur,” he continued, turning to Godefroid, “is rather a costly affair. My daughter cannot rise, and therefore it is difficult to change her sheets. Those cords are fastened to pulleys; by slipping a square of leather beneath her and drawing it up by the four corners with these pulleys, we are able to make her bed without fatigue to her or to ourselves.”

“They swing me!” cried Vanda, gaily.

Happily, Auguste now came in with a teapot, which he placed on a table, together with the Sevres tea-set; then he brought cakes and sandwiches and cream. This sight diverted his mother’s mind from the nervous crisis which seemed to threaten her.

“See, Vanda, here is Nathan’s new novel. If you wake in the night you will have something to read.”

“Oh! delightful! ‘La Perle de Dol;’ it must be a love-story, – Auguste, I have something to tell you! I’m to have an accordion!”

Auguste looked up suddenly with a strange glance at his grandfather.

“See how he loves his mother!” cried Vanda. “Come and kiss me, my kitten. No, it is not your grandfather you are to thank, but monsieur, who is good enough to lend me one. I am to have it to-morrow. How are they made, monsieur?”

Godefroid, at a sign from the old man, explained an accordion at length, while sipping the tea which Auguste brought him and which was in truth, exquisite.

About half-past ten o’clock he retired, weary of beholding the desperate struggle of the son and father, admiring their heroism, and the daily, hourly patience with which they played their double parts, each equally exhausting.

“Well,” said Monsieur Bernard, who followed him home, “you now see, monsieur, the life I live. I am like a thief, on the watch all the time. A word, a gesture might kill my daughter; a mere gewgaw less than she is accustomed to seeing about her would reveal all to that mind that can penetrate everything.”

“Monsieur,” replied Godefroid, “on Monday next Halpersohn shall pronounce upon your daughter. He has returned. I myself doubt the possibility of any science being able to revive that body.”

“Oh! I don’t expect that,” cried the father; “all I ask is that her life be made supportable. I felt sure, monsieur, of your sympathy, and I see that you have indeed comprehended everything – Ah! there’s the attack coming on!” he exclaimed, as the sound of a cry came through the partition; “she went beyond her strength.”

Pressing Godefroid’s hand, the old man hurriedly returned to his own rooms.

At eight o’clock the next morning Godefroid knocked at the door of the celebrated Polish doctor. He was shown by a footman to the first floor of a little house Godefroid had been examining while the porter was seeking and informing the footman.

Happily, Godefroid’s early arrival saved him the annoyance of being kept waiting. He was, he supposed, the first comer. From a very plain and simple antechamber he passed into a large study, where he saw an old man in a dressing-gown smoking a long pipe. The dressing-gown, of black bombazine, shiny with use, dated from the period of the Polish emigration.

“What can I do for you?” said the Jewish doctor, “for I see you are not ill.” And he fixed on his visitor a look which had the inquisitive, piercing expression of the eyes of a Polish Jew, eyes which seem to have ears of their own.

Halpersohn was, to Godefroid’s great astonishment, a man of fifty-six years of age, with small bow-legs, and a broad, powerful chest and shoulders. There was something oriental about the man, and his face in its youth must have been very handsome. The nose was Hebraic, long and curved like a Damascus blade. The forehead, truly Polish, broad and noble, but creased like a bit of crumpled paper, resembled that given by the old Italian masters to Saint Joseph. The eyes, of a sea-green, and circled, like those of parrots, with a gray and wrinkled membrane, expressed slyness and avarice in an eminent degree. The mouth, gashed into the face like a wound, added to the already sinister expression of the countenance all the sarcasm of distrust.

That pale, thin face, for Halpersohn’s whole person was remarkably thin, surmounted by ill-kept gray hair, ended in a long and very thick, black beard, slightly touched with white, which hid fully half the face, so that nothing was really seen of it but the forehead, nose, eyes, cheek-bones, and mouth.

This friend of the revolutionist Lelewel wore a black velvet cap which came to a point on the brow, and took a high light worthy of the touch of Rembrandt.

The question of the physician (who has since become so celebrated, as much for his genius as for his avarice) caused some surprise in Godefroid’s mind, and he said to himself: —

“I wonder if he takes me for a thief.”

The answer to this mental question was on the doctor’s table and fireplace. Godefroid thought he was the first to arrive; he was really the last. Preceding clients had left large offerings behind them; among them Godefroid noticed piles of twenty and forty-franc gold pieces and two notes of a thousand francs each. Could that be the product of one morning? He doubted it, and suspected the Pole of intentional trickery. Perhaps the grasping but infallible doctor took this method of showing his clients, mostly rich persons, that gold must be dropped into his pouch, and not buttons.

Moses Halpersohn was, undoubtedly, largely paid, for he cured, and he cured precisely those desperate diseases which science declares incurable. It is not known in Europe that the Slav races possess many secrets. They have a collection of sovereign remedies, the fruits of their connection with the Chinese, Persians, Cossacks, Turks, and Tartars. Certain peasant women in Poland, who pass for witches, cure insanity radically with the juice of herbs. A vast body of observation, not codified, exists in Poland on the effects of certain plants, and certain barks of trees reduced to powder, which are transmitted from father to son, and family to family, producing cures that are almost miraculous.

Halpersohn, who for five or six years was called a quack on account of his powders and herb medicines, had the innate science of a great physician. Not only had he studied much and observed much, but he had travelled in every part of Germany, Russia, Persia, and Turkey, whence he had gathered many a traditionary secret; and as he knew chemistry he became a living volume of those wonderful recipes scattered among the wise women, or, as the French call them, the bonnes femmes, of every land to which his feet had gone, following his father, a perambulating trader.

It must not be thought that the scene in “The Talisman” where Saladin cures the King of England is a fiction. Halpersohn possesses a silk purse which he steeps in water till the liquid is slightly colored; certain fevers yield immediately when the patient has drunk the prescribed dose of it. The virtue of plants, according to his man, is infinite, and the cure of the worst diseases possible. Nevertheless, he, like the rest of his professional brethren, stops short at certain incomprehensibilities. Halpersohn approved of the invention of homoeopathy, more on account of its therapeutics than for its medical system; he was corresponding at this time with Hedenius of Dresden, Chelius of Heidelburg, and the celebrated German doctors, all the while holding his hand closed, though it was full of discoveries. He wished for no pupils.

The frame was in keeping with this embodiment of a Rembrandt picture. The study, hung with a paper imitating green velvet, was shabbily furnished with a green divan, the cover of which was threadbare. A worn-out green carpet was on the floor. A large armchair of black leather, intended for clients, stood before the window, which was draped with green curtains. A desk chair of Roman shape, made in mahogany and covered with green morocco, was the doctor’s own seat.

Between the fireplace and the long table at which he wrote, a common iron safe stood against the wall, and on it was a clock of Viennese granite, surmounted by a group in bronze representing Cupid playing with Death, the present of a great German sculptor whom Halpersohn had doubtless cured. On the mantel-shelf was a vase between two candlesticks, and no other ornament. On either side of the divan were corner-buffets of ebony, holding plates and dishes, and Godefroid also noticed upon them two silver bowls, glass decanters, and napkins.

This simplicity, which amounted almost to bareness struck Godefroid, whose quick eye took it all in as he recovered his self-possession.

“Monsieur, I am, as you say, perfectly well myself; I have come on behalf of a woman to whom you were asked to pay a visit some time ago. She lives on the boulevard du Mont-Parnasse.”

“Ah! yes; the lady who has sent her son here several times. Well, monsieur, let her come here to me.”

“Come here!” repeated Godefroid, indignantly. “Monsieur, she cannot even be moved from her bed to a chair; they lift her with pulleys.”

“You are not a physician, I suppose?” said the Jewish doctor, with a singular grimace which made his face appear more wicked than it really was.

“If the Baron de Nucingen sent word that he was ill and wanted you to visit him, would you reply, ‘Let him come here to me’?”

“I should go to him,” said the Jew, coldly, spitting into a Dutch pot made of mahogany and full of sand.

“You would go,” said Godefroid, gently, “because the Baron de Nucingen has two millions a year, and – ”

“The rest has nothing to do with the matter; I should go.”

“Well, monsieur, you must go to the lady on the boulevard du Mont-Parnasse for the same reason. Without possessing the fortune of the Baron du Nucingen, I am here to tell you that you may yourself put a price upon this lady’s cure, or upon your attendance if you fail; I am ready to pay it in advance. But perhaps, monsieur, as you are a Polish refugee and, I believe, a communist, the lady’s parentage may induce you to make a sacrifice to Poland. She is the granddaughter of Colonel Tarlowski, the friend of Poniatowski.”

“Monsieur, you came here to ask me to cure that lady, and not to give me advice. In Poland I am a Pole; in Paris I am Parisian. Every man does good in his own way; the greed with which I am credited is not without its motive. The wealth I am amassing has its destination; it is a sacred one. I sell health; the rich can afford to purchase it, and I make them pay. The poor have their doctors. If I had not a purpose in view I would not practise medicine. I live soberly and I spend my time in rushing hither and thither; my natural inclination is to be lazy, and I used to be a gambler. Draw your conclusions, young man. You are too young still to judge old men.”

Godefroid was silent.

“From what you say,” went on the doctor, “the lady in question is the granddaughter of that imbecile who had no courage but that of fighting, and who took part in delivering over his country to Catherine II?”

“Yes, monsieur.”