"Pray come in," said Esterhazy, in a piteous tone.
"Ah, my niece has left! Well, I suppose that, as usual, she has conquered, and you release her?"
"Not at all," replied the unhappy mannikin; "I still beg for the honor of her hand. The empress has spoken, and I have only to obey."
CHAPTER LXXXI.
FRANZ ANTONY MESMER.
For some weeks great excitement had existed in Vienna. In all assemblies, coffee-houses, and restaurants, in the streets and on the public places, the topic of conversation had been the wonderful cures of the Suabian physician, Mesmer. These cures contravened all past experience, and set at naught all reason. Mesmer made no use of decoction or electuary—he prescribed neither baths nor cataplasms; he cured his patients by the power of his hand and the glance of his large, dark eye. He breathed upon their foreheads, and forthwith they saw visions of far-off lands; he passed the tips of his fingers over their faces, and pain and suffering vanished at his touch. No wonder that physicians denounced him as a charlatan, and apothecaries reviled him as an impostor.
No wonder that the populace, so prone to believe the marvellous, had faith in Mesmer, and reverenced him as a saint. Why should he not perform miracles with his hand, as did Moses with a rod, when he struck the rock? Why should not the power of his eye master disease, as once the glance of the Apostles gave speech to the dumb, and awakened life in the dead?
Mesmer, too, was an apostle—the apostle of a new faith. He bade suffering humanity turn to heaven for relief. "The reflection from the planets," said he, "and the rays of the sun, exercise over the human system a magnetic power. The great remedy for disease lies in this magnetic power, which resides in iron and steel, and which has its highest and most mysterious development in man."
The people believed, and sought his healing hand. He mastered their infirmities, and soothed their sufferings. But the more the world honored and trusted him, the more bitter grew the hatred of the faculty. Each day brought him fresh blessings and fresh imprecations. The physicians, who, in Salzburg, had hurled Paracelsus from a rock, dared not attempt the life of Mesmer; but they persecuted him as an impostor, and proved, by learned and scientific deduction, that his system was a lying absurdity.
Those who affected strength of mind, and refused to believe any thing except that which could be demonstrated by process of reasoning, gave in their adherence to the indignant physicians. Those, on the contrary, who had faith in the mysteries of religion, were disciples of Mesmer; and they reverenced him as a prophet sent from heaven, to prove the supremacy of nature over knowledge.