Heroic remedies could alone avail. The battle which had seemed to be won, would yet be lost but by the grace of God. His utmost powers must be put forth to make up for this sudden desertion on the part of Nature; she had gone over to the enemy’s camp, leaving science single-handed and almost desperate.
After his dispute with his brother-in-law, Leon had remained quiet for a little while; then he was seized with that craving for violent exercise which comes over us in certain states of mind, as though a skein of suffering were wound round us and we must walk far to release ourself.
For above an hour he paced about the grounds. When he came in again, as he was passing through the “Hall of Hymen,” he perceived, on a chair, a broad brimmed black hat. Seated on the divan which surrounded the pedestal of the marble group, he discovered the diminutive person of Padre Paoletti, looking smaller than ever in his hunched-up attitude. Out of the little black mass came his pleasant face and those eyes which sparkled so vividly, as he slowly uncurled himself like a snail creeping out of its shell. It was a strange fact, but in his present state of mind the presence of the priest seemed to comfort Leon.
“They told me as I came in,” said Paoletti in evident distress, “that Doña María was suddenly very much worse. You see how useless our deceit has been. Is the time come for the truth?”
“Perhaps,” said Leon holding the door for Paoletti to go into the room first.
They arrived just as Moreno was applying the last resources of his skill. Paoletti at once retired to pray in the chapel, which was ablaze with tapers; the husband and the physician remained to watch with infinite anguish and pity the drama of a diseased brain where ideas—or intangible fluids—and organic life—or a mysterious essence—were going the circuit of the nervous centres in a bewildering round, their obscure struggle hastening on the divorce which we call death. Everything was done that lay in human power to avert immediate danger and divert the mischief from the centre to the extremities. But no remedy availed to rouse the reaction that might have expelled the enemy. It progressed triumphantly, like a desperate invader who has burnt his ships. They tried everything and each trial only confirmed them in despair.
All day the sufferer lay in a state of alternate delirium and prostration. The physician announced with solemn decision that the end could not be far off.
“What remains to be done,” he said, “is in the hands of the physician of the soul.”
Later in the day María seemed to wake up and her mind was clear; she was quite herself again, and enjoying that brief interval of lucidity which nature almost always grants in such cases, as though to allow those who are about to pass into the other world to cast a parting glance on this which they are quitting.