The snow man

by George Sand

“It was in Christian Waldo’s comedy;—a juggler’s trick! You see, doctor, I am thinking about the puppets, as you wished. I feel heavy—do not leave me.”

And even as he spoke, the baron fell asleep, with his eyes open like a corpse.

In a few moments, his eyelids relaxed and then closed. The doctor felt his pulse. It was too full and heavy. In his opinion the patient ought to be bled, but how could he induce him to allow it?

“A thankless, odious, impossible task to be keeping this man alive, in spite of heaven and himself!” Thus reflected the poor doctor. “Either he has constant attacks of insanity, or else he is tormented by remorse. I feel as if I should go crazy myself from being with him; the terrors of his imagination seize upon me, too, as if I were becoming the accomplice of some crime, by trying to save his life!”

But the young man had a mother, and a betrothed sweetheart; and as a few years of lucrative employment would enable him to marry the one, and save the other from poverty, he had consented to be nailed to this corpse, incessantly galvanized into a seeming life by the resources of his art. Sometimes he was full of devotion to his task, and again felt so broken down with fatigue and disgust, that he scarcely knew whether he would prefer to have his patient die or recover. The young man was of a kindly disposition and an excellent heart. This constant intercourse with an atheist was freezing him; and he had not even the privilege of defending his opinions, for contradiction irritated the patient. He was sociable and cheerful, while the sick man, under his outward habit of sour and cynical raillery, was gloomy and misanthropic.

While the baron lay there asleep, moreover, the pleasures of the night were under full headway. The sounds of fireworks and music, the barking of the dogs roused out of their kennels by the stamping of the horses that were being harnessed, the laughter of the ladies in the corridors of the chateau, the gleaming lights that could be seen moving upon the lake, everything that was going on outside of the silent and gloomy chamber where the sick man, immovable and livid, lay in heavy slumber, intensified the young man’s sense of isolation and servitude.

The Countess d’Elveda, in the meanwhile, was absorbed in conspiring with the Russian ambassador against the nationality of Sweden; while the cousins and second cousins of the baron were keeping watch upon the door of his apartments.

“He will go,” they whispered to each other; “no, he will not be able. He is more ill than he will confess. He is better than people think.”

How were they to ascertain? The servants, perfectly devoted to the absolute will of this master, who paid well, and punished well too—for in Sweden, servants at this period were still liable to corporal punishment—invariably replied, when questioned, that the baron had never been better. And as for the doctor, the baron, on engaging him, had required him to give his word of honor that he would never reveal the serious nature of his malady.

As the reader has already been told, the baron, to account for his frequent disappearances from his entertainments, had caused it to be generally understood that he was always liable to be called away by some one or other of his numerous and important engagements. This was, moreover, to a certain extent true; he was accustomed to supervise the details of the political intrigues in which he was concerned; and his private affairs were embarrassed with the lawsuits to which his restless disposition and despotic claims were constantly giving rise. Now, however, superadded to all these causes of excitement, was a strange trouble, indistinct as yet, but which produced more effect upon his bodily health than all his ordinary annoyances together. Forgotten suspicions, apprehensions long ago quieted, had been reawakened in his mind since the ball of the evening before, and still more since the exhibition of marionettes. The result had been one of the nervous attacks to which he was liable, whose effect was to distort his mouth, and give a distinct cast to one of his eyes. As he was very vain of his beauty—his face, although wasted, was still noble and regular—especially at the present time, when he was proposing to be married, he had shut himself up as much as possible since this disfiguration came on, and was receiving medical treatment, to carry him through the attack as rapidly as possible.