ording to the way in which their organs
absorb, from the medium in which they live, the elementary atoms that
produce it. We went crazy over catalepsy; and with the eagerness that
boys throw into every pursuit, we endeavored to endure pain by thinking
of something else. We exhausted ourselves by making experiments not
unlike those of the epileptic fanatics of the last century, a religious
mania which will some day be of service to the science of humanity.
I would stand on Lambert's chest, remaining there for several minutes
without giving him the slightest pain; but notwithstanding these crazy
attempts, we did not achieve an attack of catalepsy.

This digression seemed necessary to account for my first doubts, which
were, however, completely dispelled by Monsieur Lefebvre.

"When this attack had passed off," said he, "my nephew sank into a state
of extreme terror, a dejection that nothing could overcome. He thought
himself unfit for marriage. I watched him with the care of a mother for
her child, and found him preparing to perform on himself the operation
to which Origen believed he owed his talents. I at once carried him
off to Paris, and placed him under the care of Monsieur Esquirol. All
through our journey Louis sat sunk in almost unbroken torpor, and did
not recognize me. The Paris physicians pronounced him incurable, and
unanimously advised his being left in perfect solitude, with nothing to
break the silence that was needful for his very improbable recovery,
and that he should live always in a cool room with a subdued
light.--Mademoiselle de Villenoix, whom I had been careful not to
apprise of Louis' state," he went on, blinking his eyes, "but who was
supposed to have broken off the match, went to Paris and heard what the
doctors had pronounced. She immediately begged to see my nephew, who
hardly recognized her; then, like the noble soul she is, she insisted on
devoting herself to giving him such care as might tend to his recovery.
She would have been obliged to do so if he had been her husband, she
said, and could she do less for him as her lover?

"She removed Louis to Villenoix, where they have been living for two
years."

So, instead of continuing my journey, I stopped at Blois to go to see
Louis. Good Monsieur Lefebvre would not hear of my lodging anywhere but
at his house, where he showed me his nephew's room with the books and
all else that had belonged to him. At every turn the old man could not
suppr