Page:Novels of Honoré de Balzac Volume 23.djvu/52

 ''penalties endured by a culprit? Is this opinion more harmful than effective? And, if it should be decided for the affirmative, what means should be employed to guard against the disadvantages resulting from this?'' The Royal Academy of Science and Art at Metz, to which Minoret belonged, must have the original of this essay. Although, thanks to this friendship, the doctor’s wife had nothing to apprehend, she was so afraid of going to the scaffold, that this unconquerable terror aggravated the aneurism which she owed to an exaggerated sensitiveness. In spite of all the precautions that an adoring man could take for his wife, Ursule met the cart full of the condemned, in which was Madame Roland, and this sight caused her death. Minoret, full of tenderness for his Ursule, to whom he had refused nothing and who had led a life of studied elegance, found himself almost poor after he had lost her. Robespierre had him appointed head physician to a hospital.

Although, during the animated altercations to which mesmerism gave rise, Minoret’s name acquired a celebrity which recalled him from time to time to his parents, the Revolution was so great a dissolvent and so broke up family connections that, in 1813, Nemours was entirely unaware of the existence of Doctor Minoret, who was led by an unforeseen chance to conceive the idea of returning, like a hare, to die at home.

Whilst traveling through France, where the eye so quickly wearies of the monotony of the plains, who is there that has not felt the delicious sensation