Page:Georges Eekhoud - Escal Vigor, a novel.djvu/120

96 wound her in the shoulder. A reaction immediately followed and, mad with despair and horrified at his own conduct, he threatened to turn against himself the weapon which he had directed against Blandine.

Justly alarmed at this terrifying episode, the Dowager contrived, unknown to her grandson so as to avoid exciting his wrath, to bring about an interview with a celebrated practitioner, who came to the villa on the pretext of requesting from Kehlmark information on some bibliophilistic point. The physician studied the young man for a long time, under cover of a conversation concerning scientific literature.

In his report to the Countess, the doctor diagnosed a nervous irritability, the cause of which he laboured in vain to discover. At all events, he prescribed a hydropathic treatment and physical exercises,—swimming, fencing, skating, riding,—and declared, for the rest, that he had discovered in the subject no organic lesion or any morbid defect. On the contrary, he asserted that he had never encountered a more active intelligence, so sane a judgment, or an equal elevation of views in so vivacious a nature; and he ended by congratulating the grandmother,