“My dear Gault,” the doctor went on, “if my wrist had been gripped in an iron manacle screwed tight by a locksmith, I should not have felt the bracelet of metal so hard as that woman’s fingers; her hand was of unyielding steel, and I am convinced that she could have crushed my bones and broken my hand from the wrist. The pressure, beginning almost insensibly, increased without relaxing, fresh force being constantly added to the former grip; a tourniquet could not have been more effectual than that hand used as an instrument of torture.—To me, therefore, it seems proven that under the influence of passion, which is the will concentrated on one point and raised to an incalculable power of animal force, as the different varieties of electric force are also, man may direct his whole vitality, whether for attack or resistance, to one of his organs.—Now, this little lady, under the stress of her despair, had concentrated her vital force in her hands.”
“She must have a good deal too, to break a wrought-iron bar,” said the chief warder, with a shake of the head.
“There was a flaw in it,” Monsieur Gault observed.
“For my part,” said the doctor, “I dare assign no limits to nervous force. And indeed it is by this that mothers, to save their children, can magnetize lions, climb, in a fire, along a parapet where a cat would not venture, and endure the torments that sometimes attend childbirth. In this lies the secret of the attempts made by convicts and prisoners to regain their liberty. The extent of our vital energies is as yet unknown; they are part of the energy of nature itself, and we draw them from unknown reservoirs.”
“Monsieur,” said the warder in an undertone to the Governor, coming close to him as he was escorting Doctor Lebrun as far as the outer gates of the Conciergerie, “Number 2 in the secret cells says he is ill, and needs the doctor; he declares he is dying,” added the turnkey.
“Indeed,” said the Governor.
“His breath rattles in his throat,” replied the man.
“It is five o’clock,” said the doctor; “I have had no dinner. But, after all, I am at hand. Come, let us see.”
“Number 2, as it happens, is the Spanish priest suspected of being Jacques Collin,” said Monsieur Gault to the doctor, “and one of the persons suspected of the crime in which that poor young man was implicated.”
“I saw him this morning,” replied the doctor. “Monsieur Camusot sent for me to give evidence as to the state of the rascal’s health, and I may assure you that he is perfectly well, and could make a fortune by playing the part of Hercules in a troupe of athletes.”