Page:Novels of Honoré de Balzac Volume 23.djvu/114

 observers, and which fall, like stones to the bottom of the sea, into the turmoil of Parisian events.

At the beginning of this year, the anti-mesmerist’s peace was disturbed by the following letter:

“Every friendship, even if lost, has its rights which are with difficulty prescribed. I know that you are alive, and I retain less recollection of our enmity than of our happy days in the wretched lodging of Saint-Julien-le-Pauvre. Just as I am about to leave this world I am anxious to prove to you that magnetism will constitute one of the most important sciences, if, however, all science is not one. I can overwhelm your incredulity with positive proofs. Perhaps I may be indebted to your curiosity for the pleasure of shaking your hand once more, as we used to do before Mesmer.

“Always yours,

“BOUVARD.”

Stung as a lion is stung by a gad-fly, the anti-mesmerist flew to Paris and left his card at old Bouvard’s house, in Rue Férou, near Saint-Sulpice. Bouvard left a card at his hotel, writing on it: “Tomorrow, at nine o’clock, Rue Saint-Honoré, opposite the Assumption.” Minoret, grown young once more, did not sleep. He went to see the old doctors of his acquaintance, and asked them if the world was upside down, if there was a College of Medicine, if the four Faculties still survived. The doctors reassured him by saying that the old spirit of resistance still existed; only, instead of persecuting, the Academy of Medicine and the Academy of Science grossly ridiculed whilst ranking the magnetic feats