ask her every day what she longed for. Her
sister-in-law, moreover, brought her all sorts of stories of
children born with appalling mother's marks due to this cause.
She became frightened and began to wonder what she most wanted,
but could think of nothing. At last, when eating a pastille
flavored with pineapple, it occurred to her that pineapple is an
excellent fruit, and one, moreover, which she had never seen, for
at that time it was extremely rare. Thereupon she began to long
for pineapple, and all the more when she was told that at that
season they could not be obtained. She now began to feel that she
must have pineapple or die, and her husband ran all over Paris,
vainly offering twenty louis for a pineapple. At last he
succeeded in obtaining one through the kindness of Mme.
Bonaparte, and drove home furiously just as his wife, always
talking of pineapples, had gone to bed. He entered the room with
the pineapple, to the great satisfaction of the Duchess's mother.
(In one of her own pregnancies, it appears, she longed in vain
for cherries in January, and the child was born with a mark on
her body resembling a cherry--in scientific terminology, a
_naevus_.) The Duchess effusively thanked her husband and wished
to eat of the fruit immediately, but her husband stopped her and
said that Corvisart, the famous physician, had told him that she
must on no account touch it at night, as it was extremely
indigestible. She promised not to do so, and spent the night in
caressing the pineapple. In the morning the husband came and cut
up the fruit, presenting it to her in a porcelain bowl. Suddenly,
however, there was a revulsion of feeling; she felt that she
could not possibly eat pineapple; persuasion was useless; the
fruit had to be taken away and the windows opened, for the very
smell of it had become odious. The Duchess adds that henceforth,
throughout her life, though still liking the flavor, she was only
able to eat pineapple by doing a sort of violence to herself.
(_Memories de la Duchesse d'Abrantes_, vol. iii, Chapter VIII.)
It should be added that, in old age, the Duchess d'Abrantes
appears to have become insane.

The influence of suggestion must certainly be accepted as, at all events,
increasing and emphasizing the tendency to longings. It can scarcely,
however, be regarded as a ra