“Not at all; be quiet,” replied Marat, with a false smile which might seem sweet to the sufferer, but was ironical to Balsamo, and noting that the latter had seen through him, the young surgeon whispered to him:
“It is a dreadful operation. The bone is splintered and sensitive so as to make any one pity him. He will die of the pain, not the injury; that will make his soul want to fly away.”
“Why operate on him—why not let him die tranquilly?”
“Because it is a surgeon’s duty to attempt a cure when it is impossible.”
“But you say that he will suffer dreadfully on account of his having a soul too tender for his frame? then, why not operate on the soul so that the tranquillity of the one will be the salvation of the other?”
“Just what I have done,” replied Marat, while the patient was tied down. “By my words, I spoke to the soul—to his sensitiveness, what made the Greek philosopher say, ‘Pain, thou art no ill.’ I told him he would not feel much pain, and it is the business of his soul not to feel any. That is the only remedy known up to the present. As for the questions of the soul—lies! why is this deuce of a soul clamped to the body? When I knocked this head off a spell ago, the body said nothing. Yet that was a grave operation enough. But the movement had ceased, sensitiveness was no more and the soul had fled, as you spiritualists say. That is why the head and the body which I severed, made no remonstrance to me. But the body of this unhappy fellow with the soul still in, will be yelling awfully in a little while. Stop up your ears closely, master. For you are sensitive, and your theory will be killed by the shock, until the day when your theory can separate the soul from the body.”
“You believe such separation will never come?” said Balsamo.
“Try, for this is a capital opening.”
“I will; this young man interests me and I do not want him to feel the pain.”
“You are a leader of men,” said Marat, “but you are not a heavenly being, and you cannot prevent the lad from suffering.”