CHAP. XVI.

Saturday, the twenty-fifth of August, the fête of the king was celebrated with sports and rejoicings. A joûte d'eau was held on the Rhone; that is to say—two boats row as fast as possible in opposite directions bearing each of them a man, standing on the prow, armed with a long pole. At the moment that the boats pass by each other, each of the two men strives to push the other with his pole into the water. If both parties fail, the assistants are, for that time, disappointed; if one of the two tumbles in, they laugh and are delighted. Sometimes it happens, from the unsteadiness of their position and the effort which each makes to overturn the other, that both fall in, and, in that case, the joy of the standers and sitters-by is increased, as Malthus would say, not in an arithmetical, but in a geometrical proportion: it is not merely doubled; it is augmented a hundred-fold. Flags, and bells, and music, and the presence of the authorities and of a vast concourse of spectators, leave not the least doubt in the mind of any one but that he has been well amused. In the evening there was a ball at the prefecture.

Being somewhat indisposed, I did not stir out on this day. Kenelm had for some time past complained of languor and want of appetite, which he attributed to the heat of the summer. At St. Remy he had been in excellent spirits, passing on before us to hinder us from seeing the monuments till arrived at the right point of view; and, on the fête of St. Louis, he had been gay with the gay. No symptom of illness appeared till the following evening at the house of the general commanding the department; he then complained to me of a sensation of cold. I desired him to remove from the open window; he soon felt himself better, and joined in the dance with which the party concluded. This visit is to be remarked as the last he made.

During the three following days he was tolerably well, and, on the alternate days, took his bath in the Rhone, as it had been his custom to do during the summer, in a retired place at a small distance from the town. While bathing the last time, he cried out to his brother, "My pulse is gone." A sensation of cold had induced him to feel his pulse, and he was somewhat alarmed at this symptom of its intermission. He appeared to wish to make light of it when he came home, but it must be supposed that his own feelings made him apprehensive of illness. Afterwards it became evident that the predisposition to the fever, of which the chilliness three evenings before had been a symptom, had again manifested itself by this intermission of the pulse.

He now reposed in me a confidence, the purport of which ought perhaps to be numbered among the symptoms of the coming malady, though I was as yet unable to account for it in this way. He said his scruples, such as he had combated and surmounted three years before, had returned and had distressed him of late, beginning from a time to which he referred; since which time, and, as he believed, from the efforts he had made, he had suffered from a head-ache and pains in his chest and limbs. Not aware that an illness was at hand which would account for the sensations of which he complained without reference to any mental uneasiness, I endeavoured by reproaches and praises to restore his tranquillity. "You are indebted for your head-ache and other pains to allowing your mind to dwell on useless and groundless apprehensions. Cheerfulness, hope, and gaiety are the best things in the world to make the blood circulate and distribute equally the animal heat. Enough has been said to you on the subject of scruples, and you have admitted the reasonableness of what has been said: I had hoped they were gone for ever. You are a great comfort and blessing to me: be satisfied with yourself. You were at confession and communion five days ago: has any thing occurred since, on which you would consult your director?" He replied, "No, nothing." This we afterwards remembered with great comfort.

In the evening we went to the promenade, and walked till it was dark. I then asked if he would go home and play a game at chess: he said playfully, "Yes, if you will let me rest my head on my hands, and stick up my shoulders." This posture he had been used to take sometimes in the study-room in college, where it was permitted, being neither a mortal sin nor false grammar: of course he had since avoided and corrected the habit.

The next day the annual distribution of prizes took place at the Royal College. This scene had some attraction for Kenelm as reminding him of Stoneyhurst. He did not stay to the end of the ceremony, complaining of a sense of fatigue. In the evening he walked out again for the last time: we stopt to listen to some music on the walk, when I observed that he was excessively chill. He said to his mother, "I hope my father will be satisfied with my obedience; I have dragged myself along, cold and tired." I had urged him to walk, in the hope of diverting him. We went home; there was no question of chess; he retired early to rest.

The day following, the last of the month of August, he appeared to be well, and recovered from all sense of fatigue: he announced his intention of bathing in the Rhone as usual. I requested him to give it up, till it should be seen whether the chilliness, that seemed to renew its attacks like the fits of an ague, should again come upon him. To this he assented. He took his lesson of drawing without complaint; but, almost immediately after the departure of the master, was seized with a violent shivering: he put on a great coat; then wrapped himself in blankets, lying on the sofa. The sense of cold still continuing, he took soup, and afterwards tea. Towards evening he desired to have his bed brought down from his chamber, and placed in the inner salon: this was done. He soon broke out into a violent perspiration. Nothing more was apprehended, than that he had taken cold at his last bathing in the Rhone.

His malady was however the dreadful typhus, so fatal in crowded hospitals, in camps and prisons. To an insulated patient, well taken care of, the danger is much diminished; and, but for error, and worse than error, of the medical men who attended, my elder son had probably not fallen a victim to it, and the younger would have been kept out of the way of contagion.

In the first spring that I had passed at Avignon, my children, owing to the change of climate, all of them, beginning with the youngest, at short intervals from each other, fell ill of the scarlet fever. At that time I had sent for a physician, who treated them with much care, and, as I judged from the event, with sufficient skill. In the course of three years he had occasionally attended when his advice was wanted. His practice was among the best families of the town; he was a middle-aged man, married, and father of a family. He was entrusted by the municipality with the place of physician to the hospital, in which quality he gave lectures on anatomy, at which, so long as the dissected subject was fresh, I had allowed my sons to attend.

The typhus is an universal prostration of the forces of the body; it is no wonder then that Kenelm felt no inclination to leave his bed. For two days he remained there without seeming to himself to have any illness to complain of. M. le Docteur Roche was sent for: he pronounced the disorder to be a catarrhal fever; the symptoms nothing unfavourable; the perspiration beneficial, but excessive; and ordered the removal of some of the bed-clothes. He prescribed at this time no medicine.

As this man was considered as devout, and had frequently conversed with us on religious subjects, Kenelm, on account of the effect which he supposed his scruples to have had on his health, and assured that they would not be a subject of ridicule to a pious man, thought it right to confide them to him. The doctor coincided entirely with the reasoning of his patient: he said, "For some time past you have been forming unwholesome chyle: the bowels must be relieved; perspiration, so as not to weaken you, but to carry off the fever, probably caused by the cold bath, must be sustained: all will soon be well again." Kenelm had talked of his scruples in so edifying a manner, as to inspire the devout doctor with great respect for his piety and humility: returning into the first salon, he said to the mother: "Madame, votre fils est un ange:" she replied, "Pas encore."[69] This is one of those prophetic expressions launched at hazard, of which so many examples are on record.

On the fourth day of the malady, the delirium commenced. Roche was one of those physicians who never find out that they are in the wrong: he added the epithet "nervous," to his former definition of the fever, and ordered a calming draught at night. He called three times a day: he felt the pulse of his patient: if the delirium had failed to alarm him, the pulse might have indicated the typhus, by the "subsaltus tendonis," a weak tremulous motion in the wrist, close by the pulse. From this fourth day of his illness, I began to watch every night by the bed-side of Kenelm till two o'clock in the morning: for several years past I had been accustomed not to retire to rest till after midnight; to sit up an hour or two longer was therefore no great fatigue. Antoine, who was directed to go to bed at eight in the evening, then relieved me for the rest of the night. We adopted this arrangement, not foreseeing how long the illness would last, though the period of the typhus is well known to be thirty days. Kenelm's brother and sisters attended and served him during the day, without fear of contagion, the existence of which was positively denied by Roche, and which indeed was not to be apprehended in a case of "nervous catarrhal fever." The care of his mother extended to every moment of the day and night: her chamber was the next room to the salon in which her son lay: on the least noise she was at his bed-side. What she endured of toil, seemingly beyond human strength, and how her maternal feelings were tortured, will appear in the sequel.

One of the symptoms of the malady was the induration of the belly: it became hard and tight like a drum or inflated bladder; this proceeded from the meteorized state of the bowels; and the vapour or fumes, ascending thence to the brain, as in the case of drunkenness, caused delirium. It was attempted to relieve this induration by emollient fomentations. Kenelm's delirium was not so entire, but that his attention might be directed by those around him to any object that might require it: he spoke French or English, according to the nation of the person whom he addressed; and it was remarkable, that he talked French without hesitating or correcting his phrases, as he was wont to do in health: the delirium in this also resembling drunkenness, which, in its earlier stage, gives a firm and ready elocution.

This mental alienation continued till within a few hours of his death: it was the touchstone of his character: he talked much, even when alone, or when, as in the watches of the night, by the faint light of a lamp, he thought himself alone; and his talking was thinking aloud; so that, had his mind or disposition concealed any thing inconsistent with piety, purity, or charity, it must have been then revealed: if his self-love had been excessive, it would have burst forth in vain-glorious expressions: if he had entertained inordinate desires of any kind, they would then have betrayed themselves. But there was nothing of all this. He recited frequently and for a length of time together the prayers of the church, or those used in the family: he uttered sentiments of piety and devotion: "O my God, I love thee with my whole heart and soul, and I beg rather to die than offend thee by any mortal sin;" with many other aspirations of holy fervour. So little fear existed of his saying any thing unfit for chaste or virgin ears to hear, that, not till after his death, did it offer itself to my mind that this danger had actually been incurred. It is worthy of remark, that he never said any thing on the subject of those scruples which had given him uneasiness during his health; a presumption that they were unfounded, and had their source in timidity and inexperience. The charity "which thinketh no evil," did not now forsake him; he spoke of the several persons of his acquaintance, but not in dispraise of any. Of one who, as I knew, had lately given him offence, he said, "M. de —— is a very good, a very pious man." It may be conjectured that he made an effort to say something in this person's favour, as the sort of eulogy by no means suited the character of him to whom it was given.

His patience was admirable. On the twelfth of September, sinapism was applied to the soles of his feet: it produced no good effect, being taken off four hours after it was put on; but, during those four hours, it caused excessive torture: he said, "it is a fire that burns without consuming." Two days after the removal of the sinapism, Roche ordered blisters on the legs, and insisted, in token of his good-will, on putting them on himself: he put them on as one unaccustomed to the work: the patient, unconscious of what he was doing, tore them off in the night, and spread the blistering drug on different parts of his body. The surgeon who attended to dress the blisters, advised that these slight excoriations should be let alone, fearing to draw them by any healing plaster, and hoping that they might heal of themselves. The restlessness of the patient prevented this: plasters were then applied, but four or five of these wounds situated on the parts on which he rested in bed, continued till his death. By these wounds Kenelm was urged to exclaim, "O why do I suffer so much?" but immediately corrected himself: "I am very wrong—very impatient." He refused to take any thing to remove the nauseous taste of the medicines: he once asked for a piece of an orange for this purpose, and then rejected it. On some few occasions he complained, as one suffering indeed, but not as without resignation, or unwilling to suffer: he seemed at all times sensible of the duty of bearing his illness in the spirit of penance: even his delirium did not destroy the virtuous habits of his mind.

About this time my younger son began to be ill; the predisposition to the typhus manifested itself in listlessness and languor. Roche said, "Il est triste à cause de son frère: il faut l'amuser; il faut le promener."[70] He was still able, for some days longer, to amuse himself with his pencil or at chess with me, and to walk out with the servant or some of the family; but the malady gained upon him.

After the event, I can blame myself, and may be blamed by others, for allowing my confidence in Roche to continue so long. After the event, I received hints, and more than hints, that he was not of skill enough for a serious case; while he was still retained, no one spoke against him. Besides, he had served me well in the serious case of the scarlet fever. I did not place more reliance on him on account of his devotion, knowing that devotion is but too often another mode of self-deceit: but I thought him incapable of acting like a villain. The patient showed an appearance of great strength, and Roche's daily promises of his speedy recovery did not as yet bear the semblance of improbability.

The silence of the surgeon, who came every morning and evening to dress and keep open the blisters, also tended to deceive me. He might have been the means of saving a valuable life, of rescuing the family from the danger of contagion, all except the younger son, who had already taken the infection; and for him might have procured timely aid: but he prudently held his tongue, except to assure us that there was no danger.

At length came the grand conspirator, he who set his seal to the deceit, rendered the discovery of Roche's error impracticable, and assured its result.

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