Page:Weird Tales v41n04 (1949-05).djvu/74

72 lost the war with Turkey—and I was fairly desperate for a clue—any kind of clue—to her condition."

"H'm'm'm'm," de Grandin made one of those odd noises, half grunt, half whinny, which no one but a Frenchman can produce. "And what did you learn of gusel vereni, if you please?"

McCormick answered like a schoolboy repeating a lesson: "According to Wholbruck it is a disease of unknown origin to which Greeks, Turks, Armenians and kindred peoples seem peculiarly vulnerable, and which seldom or never attacks Western Europeans. All attempts to isolate its causitive factor have failed. Objectively its symptoms parallel those of pulmonary tuberculosis, that is, there is progressive loss of weight and stamina, though there is neither fever nor a cough. It is sometimes called 'the Angels' Disease' because the patient loses nothing of his looks as it progresses, and women often seem to become more beautiful as the end approaches. It is painless, progressive and incurable—"

"And Jules de Grandin knows about him, by blue! Oh, yes: He has seen him at his dreadful worst, and better than the herrdoktor Wholbruck he knows what causes him!

"Come, my friends, let us go see this Grecian lady who may be a victim of this so strange malady. Right away, all quickly, if you please."

OU said you know the cause of this disease?" I whispered as we drove to our mystery patient's house.

He nodded somberly. "Perhaps I spoke with too much haste, my friend. In Greece and in the Turkish hospitals I have seen him and had him explained to me at great length, but—"

"But did you ever see a cure?" I persisted.

"Hlas, no,” he admitted. "But perhaps that was because the patients' broth was spoiled by an excess of cooks."

"What d'ye mean? Too many doctors?"

"Perhaps; perhaps too few priests."

"Too few—whatever are you driving at?"

"I wish I had a ready answer, my old one. The best that I can do is guess, and though I am a very clever fellow I sometimes guess wrong."

"But what did you mean by 'too few priests'?"

"Just this: In Greece, as elsewhere in the Near and Middle East, the patina of modernity is only a thin coating laid upon an ancient culture. For the most part their physicians have been trained at Vienna or Heidelberg, great scientific institutions where the god of words has been enthroned in the high place once sacred to the Word of God. Therefore they believe what they see, or what some herrprofessor tells them he has seen, and nothing else. The priesthood, on the contrary, have been nourished on the vin du pais, as one might say. They remember and to some extent give credence to the ancient beliefs of the people."

"What’s all that got to do with—"

"Just this: The priests contend the malady is spiritual in origin;, the doctors hold that it, like all else, is completely physical. Left to themselves the papas would have attempted treatment by spiritual means, but they were not allowed to do so. And so the patients died. You see?"

"You mean it was another instance of conflict between science and religion?"

"Mais non; by no, means. There is no conflict between true science and true religion. It is our faulty definition of the terms that breeds the conflict, my friend. All religions are things of the spirit, but all things of the spirit are not necessarily religious. All physical things are subject to the laws of science, but science may concern itself with things not wholly physical, and if it fails to do so it is not entirely scientific."

"I don't think I quite follow you,” I admitted. "If you'd be a little more specific—"

"Bien. Bon," he. broke in. "You do not understand. Neither, to tell the whole truth, do I. Let us start in mutual blindness and see who first discerns the light. Meanwhile, it seems, we are arrived."

HE small house in Van Amburg Street where Philammon Pappalukas lived with his motherless daughter was neat as the proverbial pin. It stood flush with the street, only three low marble steps topped