In the town of Nay, where young Henry Busquet had been miraculously cured a few months before, a certain widow, named Madeleine Rizan, was at the point of death. Her life had for twenty-four or twenty-five years been an unbroken series of pain and sorrow. Having been attacked by the cholera in 1832, her left side had remained almost entirely paralyzed. She was quite lame, and could only move a few steps inside her house, and that only by supporting herself against the walls or furniture. Two or three times a year, in warm weather, she was able to go to Mass at the parish church of Nay, not far from her dwelling. She was unable, without assistance, either to kneel or to rise. One of her hands was totally palsied. Her general health had suffered no less than her limbs from this terrible scourge. She frequently vomited blood, and her stomach was unable to bear solid food.
Beef-tea, soup, and coffee had, however, sufficed to keep up the flame of life, ever flickering and unable to warm her feeble body. She often suffered from icy chills. The poor woman was always cold. Even in the heats of July and August, she always wished to see fire in the grate, and to have her arm-chair wheeled close to the hearth.
For the last sixteen or eighteen months, her state had been much aggravated; the paralysis of the left side had become total. The same infirmity had begun to attack the right leg. Her paralyzed limbs were greatly swollen, as happens in the case of dropsy.
Madame Rizan left her chair to take to her bed. She could not move, such was her weakness, and they were obliged to turn her, from time to time, in her bed. She was almost an inert mass. Sensibility was gone as well as motion.
"Where are my legs?" she used to inquire, when any one came to move her. Her limbs were drawn together, and she lay continually on one side in the form of a Z.
Two physicians had successively attended her. Doctor Talamon had long since given her up as incurable, and, although he continued to visit her, it was only as a friend. He refused to prescribe any remedies, saying that drugs and medicines would prove fatal, or, at best, only enfeeble her system.
Doctor Subervielle, at the repeated instance of Madame Rizan, had prescribed some medicines, and, soon finding them utterly useless, had also given up all hope. Although her paralyzed limbs had become insensible, the sufferings which this unfortunate woman experienced from her stomach and head were terrible. Owing to her constantly cramped position, she was afflicted by two painful sores—one in the hollow of her chest, and the other on the back. On her side, in several places, her skin, chafed by the bed-clothes, exposed the flesh, naked and bleeding. Her death was at hand.
Madame Rizan had two children. Her daughter, Lubine, lived with and took care of her with the greatest devotion. Her son, Romain Rizan, had a situation in a business-house at Bordeaux.
When the last hope was gone, and Doctor Subervielle declared that she had only a few hours to live, they sent in haste for her son, Romain Rizan. He came, embraced his mother, and received her last blessing and farewell. Then, obliged to leave by a message peremptorily recalling him—torn by the cruel tyranny of business from his mother's death-bed—he left her with the bitter conviction that he should never see her more. The dying woman received extreme unction. Her agony went on amid excruciating sufferings.
"My God!" she often murmured, "I pray thee to end my torments. Grant me to be healed or to die."