"She goes with me," thundered Mesmer with eyes that flashed lightning, like those of Olympian Zeus. "You gave her to me as a patient, and until she is cured she belongs to her physician."
He took Therese in his arms and carried her toward the door. But Von Paradies, with a roar like that of some wild animal, placed himself before it and defended the passage.
"Let me pass," cried he.
"Go—but first put down Therese."
"No—you shall not deprive her of the sight I have bestowed." With these words, he raised his muscular right arm, and swinging off Von Paradies as if he had been a child, Mesmer passed the opening and stood outside.
"Farewell, and fear nothing," cried he, "for your pension will not be withdrawn. Therese is once more blind. But as God is just, I will restore her again to sight!"
Mesmer, however, was destined to be foiled. His enemies were richer and more influential than he; and Von Paradies, in mortal terror for his pension, sustained them. Von Stork obtained an order, commanding the relinquishment of Therese to her natural guarians; and her father, armed with the document, went and demanded his daughter. Therese flew to Mesmer's arms, and a fearful scene ensued. It shall be described in Mesmer's own words.
"The father of Therese, resolved to carry her away by main force, rushed upon me with an unsheathed sword. I succeeded in disarming him, but the mother and daughter both fell insensible at my feet: the former from terror, the latter because her unnatural father had hurled her against the wall, where she had struck her head with such violence as to lose all consciousness. Madame von Paradies recovered and went home; but poor Therese was in a state of such nervous agony that she lost her sight entirely. I trembled for her life and reason. Having no desire to revenge myself upon her parents, I did all that I could to save her. Herr von Paradies, sustained by those who had instigated him, filled Vienna with the cry of persecution. I became an object of universal contumely, and a second order was obtained by which I was commanded to deliver Therese to her father." [Footnote: Justinus Kerner, "Fraaz Anton Mesmer," p.70.]
From this time Therese remained blind, and continued to give concerts in Vienna, as she had done before. Barth and his accomplices were triumphant; and Mesmer, disgusted with his countrymen, left Vienna, and made his home in Paris.
Therese von Paradies then, as her father asserted, was blind. Whether she ever was any thing else, remains to this day an open question. The faculty denied furiously that she had seen; Mesmer's friends, on the contrary, declared solemnly that she had been restored by animal magnetism; but that her cruel father, for the sake of the pension, had persecuted her, and so succeeded in destroying her eyesight forever.