Page:The Campaner thal, and other writings.djvu/247



CHAPTER LAST.

HAVE left Hukelum, and my gossip his bed; and the one is as sound as the other. The cure was as foolish as the malady. It first occurred to me, that, as Boerhaave used to remedy convulsions by convulsions, one fancy might in my gossip's case be remedied by another; namely, by the fancy that he was yet no man of thirty-two, but only a man of six or nine. Deliriums are dreams not encircled by sleep; and all dreams transport us back into youth, why not deliriums too? I accordingly directed every one to leave the patient; only his mother, while the fiercest meteors were darting, hissing before his fevered soul, was to sit down by him alone, and speak to him as if he were a child of eight years. The bed-mirror also I directed her to cover. She did so; she spoke to him as if he had the small-pox fever; and when he cried, "Death is standing with two-and-thirty pointed teeth before me, to eat my heart," she said to him, "Little dear, I will give thee thy roller-hat, and thy copy-book, and thy case, and thy hussar-cloak again, and more too if thou wilt be good." A reasonable speech he would have taken up and heeded much less than he did this foolish one.

At last she said,—for to women in the depth of sorrow dissimulation becomes easy,—"Well, I will try it this once,