The Malady of the Century

by Max Simon Nordau

"PARIS, March 26, 1880.

"MONSIEUR LE DOCTEUR: It is a week now since you left, and time that you should know what has been going on during that time. It was as good as a play! But you shall hear.

"When Madame la Comtesse came home, and I opened the door to her, I said nothing, but I thought to myself—what a row there will be presently. And sure enough, she had hardly set foot in her rooms when we heard an awful scream. It didn't scare me, because I knew all about it; but Isabel came tumbling out, and howled in French and Spanish mixed: 'Is it a fire? Are there thieves in the house?' It was enough to make you die of laughing.

"I was called upstairs and questioned by Anne—the countess had not the strength. She was kneeling in her ball-dress beside the bed, her face buried in the pillows that still showed the pressure of your head, and crying as if her heart would break. I know that madame cries very easily—she has always been that way as long as I have known her—but I really should not have thought, to look at her, that she could hold such a quantity of tears. Anne cross-examined me like a magistrate, but of course I made an innocent face, and knew nothing at all. I saw plainly that she did not really care a bit, the viper, for while she was cross-questioning me she gave me a look once or twice that told me quite enough. But Madame la Comtesse is very sharp. She saw at once that I knew more than I had a mind to tell. She turned a face to me, as white as a cheese, and looked at me with such eyes, that I might well have been frightened if I had not—I may say it without boasting—been born in Carpentras. At first she tried it with kindness, and then she threatened to turn me out of the house that minute, and then she wanted to bribe me by all sorts of promises—ma foi! it was not a very easy moment, but I stood firm, and madame threw herself back on the bed, and the tap was turned on full again. Would you believe it, that that Anne had the face to say to madame she had better look in the bureau to see if her money and jewels were safe. 'Silence, wretch!' cried Madame la Comtesse, so that the windows rattled, and gave the person a look that made her double up like a penknife. She does not come from Carpentras. To make a long story short, none of us went to bed that night. Madame took it into her head you might have gone for a little walk in the middle of the night, and would come back. Good idea, wasn't it? But when the morning came, she saw that the bird had really flown, and that changed the whole affair. She took to her bed, and stayed there for five days with the room all darkened, ate nothing, drank nothing, was delirious, had four doctors called in each at fifty francs the visit, beside priests and nuns, and Madame la Marquise, her mamma, got three telegrams, one longer than the other, and arrived here the day before yesterday, and now they are trying which can cry the most. But the daughter has the best of it. Since she had her mamma with her, madame seems calmer. She got up yesterday for the first time, and—not to keep back anything from you—I have great hopes that in a fortnight or three weeks' time we shall see her going to balls again. That will do her a world of good.

"She had your things taken up to the box-room, so that she might not see them any more, and Madame la Marquise has your room, but Madame la Comtesse never sets foot in it. The artist in hair says that there is talk of renting a new house, or even of going to Spain. I should be very sorry to leave Madame la Comtesse, but to Spain I would not go.

"I should be glad to know from Monsieur le Docteur whether, after madame has consoled herself a little, I may give her monsieur's address, that his things may be forwarded. I hope you are well, and that you will write me a line. You need not be anxious about madame, she will soon be all right again. You were not the first, and, let us hope, you will not have been the last.

"I salute Monsieur le Docteur, "Your very obedient servant,
"AUGUSTE.

"POSTSCRIPT.—In spite of her desperation, madame had the presence of mind to try and persuade Anne you very probably had to fly from your political enemies, or had even been carried off and murdered by Prussian agents. Anne said, 'Yes; such things have happened.' The viper! You did well to take yourself out of this."

Wilhelm was unaware that he read the letter twice or three times over without a pause between. When he was beginning for the fourth time, he suddenly remembered that he was not alone, and that Schrotter was sitting there watching him. He folded the letter in confusion. He had not the courage to say anything, or even to look at his friend, but dropped his hands and his head, and cast down his miserable eyes.

Schrotter was the first to break the silence.