Chapter VIII: Part 8

On the day after his apprehension, Hislop was examined before the sheriff--Mr Moffat, who had gone to town on purpose, being also present--when, either through fear of punishment, which he hoped to avert by his disclosures, or from the impulses of an awakened conscience, he told a tale of villany, which--whether the amazing complexity of its character be considered, the singular dexterity with which it was managed, or the astounding depravity which marked it--will scarcely be found paralleled, it is believed, in the annals of crime.

Hislop deponed, in the first place, that Lorimer, not Wotherspoon, was the actual forger of the bill, and that he had seen him write it. That he, Hislop, hired by Lorimer, had personated Wotherspoon in Bryce's house, on the occasion to which the evidence of that witness and his wife referred; and here Hislop called on Mr Moffat to mark the strong resemblance, both in person and countenance, that existed between himself and Wotherspoon; which, now that his attention was called to it, Mr Moffat perceived to be indeed singularly striking.

The deponent further stated, that Lorimer had promised him L10 for his trouble, but had paid him with five. That Wotherspoon had never used the expressions to him that he had attributed to him, when giving evidence on the trial of the former. Lastly, he declared that Lorimer had frequently said to him, in reference at once to the plot against Wotherspoon, and to Wotherspoon himself, "that he would be revenged on the object of his deadly hatred, and would put fifty pounds in his pocket besides."

On the strength of this deposition, Lorimer was now apprehended, while a respite was obtained for Wotherspoon; and the trial of the former, for the identical crime for which the latter was under sentence of death, soon after followed.

On this trial, the deposition of Hislop was, through the activity of Wotherspoon's counsel, corroborated in every particular, and the whole villany laid bare to open day.

The general result of the evidence against Lorimer showed that he had selected Hislop to be an instrument of his atrocious designs chiefly on account of his remarkable resemblance to Wotherspoon. That, still further to heighten this deception, so as to deceive Bryce and his wife, should they, as he expected they would, be confronted with Wotherspoon--or foreseeing, in short, exactly what had happened with regard to him--he had been at the trouble and expense of procuring for Hislop a wig of exactly the same description with that worn by Wotherspoon, and which was of rather a peculiar make and colour. That he had selected a day for coming to Edinburgh, to execute that part of the plot which was performed in Bryce's house, when he knew that Wotherspoon was also in the city; and thus his villanous design was complete in all its parts, and could only have been discovered through the treachery of Hislop. His assertions were all positive, while Wotherspoon's were necessarily all negative; and it is well known how much easier it is to prove than to disprove; and of this Lorimer had the full advantage in the case of the prosecution of the former.

At the desire of the Lord Advocate, the wig which Mr Wotherspoon wore was placed on Hislop's head in court, the former being also present, when Bryce and his wife were called in, and asked to say which of the two was the Mr Wotherspoon they had seen with Lorimer; when both without hesitation and at once, pointed out Hislop; that difference in look and appearance--for, however like two persons may be, some difference between them there always is--being evident, when they were seen together under the circumstances just mentioned, which was scarcely to be detected when they were seen separately by those who were not previously acquainted with them individually and personally: and thus the most fatal evidence of all that had been adduced against Wotherspoon was in one instant rendered not only innocuous to him, but destructive to his persecutor.

The result of Lorimer's trial will be foreseen by the reader. He was condemned to death, and hanged in the Grassmarket of Edinburgh; while Wotherspoon was dismissed from the bar with an unblemished character, and with the sympathy of the whole court and the public at large, for his unmerited sufferings.

Wotherspoon again became a wealthy man, and saw many happy years afterwards; but often said that he would never again speak of forging bills, as Lorimer had declared, after he was condemned to death, that it was his having overheard his idle, but unguarded language on this subject in the inn, that had suggested to him the plot which had so nearly accomplished his destruction.

THE SURGEON'S TALES.

THE THREE LETTERS.

It is a difficult question how far doctors ought voluntarily to interfere in matters of wills. One-half of our profession advocate the moral necessity and propriety of not only putting their patients in such a state of knowledge as to their bodily condition, as to bring out by _inference_ the prudence of arranging their temporal affairs, but of adding suggestions and recommendations to the effect of inducing them to perform this indispensable duty, before the grim tyrant's advances may render it impossible. The other half smile at their bolder and more philanthropic brethren, as fools who interfere with what lies beyond their province, and limit their statements or advice to those necessary replies which are called for by the questions of the patients themselves. Upon all such points, where the truth is sought for _in partibus extremis_, much has been said, and will be said; and perhaps a thousand years hence the profession and the public may be as far from any simple designative proposition of the real moral truth of the subjects, as they are at present. The fault lies in men's minds, which, seeking eternally to generalise, lose sight of the grand fact in nature--that, as in botany she defies man in his attempts at a natural classification, so, in moral states and conditions of society, she equally defies him to manufacture verbal rules for the regulation of individuals or masses under all existing circumstances. For my part, I have always avoided these verbose questions; and, though I have practised for many years, I have never experienced any difficulty in so regulating my statements and advices to dying patients, as might best suit their temporal interests of health and wealth, without losing sight of what was due to higher and more sacred feelings and prospects of a world to come. To tell some patients that they are dying would be to commit a species of homicide; to conceal from them the state of their bodies, and their approaching dissolution, may be to be accessory to worldly wrongs, to be felt for generations, and to that condemnation that is to be felt for ever; but between those extremes there ranges a wide field for the workings of prudence, an ample space for the exercise of a noble and manly virtue, and scope enough and to spare for the exhibition of all those elevated feelings of good hearts that add grace and beauty to the possessors, and are displayed for the benefit of our fellow-creatures. No man has so much in his power for the benefit of mankind as a medical practitioner; and proud am I to say, that no man, speaking generally, more seldom loses the opportunity of turning it to the proper account. These observations are called forth by a case that, some time ago, came under my observation, where the hand of a ruling Providence spurned the schemes of weak mortals, and took the regulation of a dying person's affairs out of her hands, in a manner as strange as it is dark and mysterious.

Mrs Germain, a widow lady of fortune, sent her niece, a young woman about twenty-three years of age, to request that I would visit her in my professional capacity. The case, I was told, was not an urgent one, and I might call at any time during the course of the day, as suited my arrangements and leisure. I went, accordingly, in a short time afterwards, and was introduced into a very splendid drawing-room, where I observed an elderly lady, whom I took to be Mrs Germain herself, reclining on a damask-covered couch, with the young person who had waited on me sitting on a footstool by her side. The two individuals were interesting in many respects, even at first sight. There was a singular elegance of taste displayed in the dress, though a dishabille, of the elderly one, which, co-operating with a set of features at one time undoubtedly handsome, and now noble and intellectual, bespoke the lady by birth, and one that had cultivated the art of making the body and the mind reflect on each other mutual beauty and adornment. The young one, whom I had seen before, but under the shade of a jealous veil, was one of those _blondines_ so highly prized in French novel-writing, and seldom seen in our country in the perfection of contrast, of dark piercing eyes and light auburn tresses, so frequently seen in France. She was also very elegantly attired; and the graceful manner in which she reclined, with her left arm on the side of the couch, and her right holding a richly-gilt book, from which she had been reading to her aunt, produced an effect which an artist or a lover would not have been slow to acknowledge. On a nearer approach, I soon detected, in the composed and bland features of the elder, the delicate, yet certain, touch of the finger of some latent, lurking disease; which, by draining the blood from the lips, blanching the lower confines of the temples, and depressing the globes of the eyes, had given a melancholy premonition of serious changes about to be effected in vital parts.

Having been introduced by the niece, who rose and handed me a chair, I sat down by the side of the couch, and received an account of the symptoms which had exhibited themselves to the invalid; from which I learned that she had been ailing for several months, but that no indications of serious disease having been detected by her, she had put off her application for medical advice from day to day, in the hope of getting better. How little did she know that, during all that time, she had been unconsciously, yet progressively, travelling the dark path of death!--how little did she now know, as she lay there, arrayed in the tasteful and costly decorations of the body--her face clothed with the composure of easy indolence and the expression of noble pride, and her soft languid eye lighted up with the hope of a long course of happiness supplied from the resources of wealth--that death was busy with the secret parts of her heart! I understood her complaint at the first description of her symptoms--an aneurism or tumour in the region of the fountain of life, which would burst in an instant, and precipitate her in another moment into eternity.

Her complaint defies all the efforts of our profession, and it is, moreover, one which never can with propriety be explained to a patient, because there are few that have firmness enough to enable them to bear up under the certainty of an instantaneous dissolution, and the uncertainty of the dread moment. I therefore exercised that allowable and humane dissimulation which the searching eyes of patients, or that of friends, render necessary for their freedom and relief from fears that would often kill as certainly as the disease which generates them. This might not have been called for by any vigilance on the part of Mrs Germain to read my face; she felt no apprehension, and put no questions as to what I conceived to be the nature of her complaint. But I saw the dark eyes of the niece fixed upon my countenance with a searching intensity of look and solicitude of expression, which showed that, if she could, she would have read the most secret thoughts of my heart. There was affection deep and pure in that look, and the fear of the bursting asunder of ties more dear to her than her own existence. She continued her gaze silently, but thoughtfully; and the conversation of her aunt, which, notwithstanding her weakness, was spirited and buoyant, touching many indifferent topics lightly, and with the ease and grace of high breeding and fine cultivated fancy, struck her ear without carrying a meaning to her mind. I indulged the confidence of the patient, and witnessed, with feelings which we only can know, the delusive spirit of life flapping his golden-coloured wings round the heart whose citadel was already occupied by the demon of death. Such scenes are familiar to us; but there was something in this different from any I had yet witnessed: and I took my departure with an assumed placidity of look, while the inmost recesses of my spirit were convulsed by the laugh of the patient, and the silent-brooding and fearful-searching eye of that angelic being, whose existence seemed to be wound up in her friend.

Even in desperate cases we must prescribe; and in the evening I sent some medicines of the paregoric and hypnotic kind, with a view, simply--for I could do no more--of relieving a slight pain which occasionally, but at considerable intervals, interfered with her good spirits. I continued my visits, and often witnessed scenes similar to those I described. The patient was gradually approaching the dread issue; and still, at every meeting, that beautiful young woman watched my every look, and searched my heart with those brilliant eyes, that spoke some mysterious language, which even the deepest feelings of friendship for her benefactress would scarcely explain. The patient herself felt no solicitude--she saw no danger. It was clearly otherwise with her niece: but what surprised me was, that this devoted girl only looked her intense feelings; she never asked me if her aunt was in danger. Every glance, every movement, showed that she felt it; but the fear of having her apprehensions confirmed--such, at least, was my construction of her strange conduct--sealed up her lips, and constrained her to a solemn silence.

One day I called, and was shown into an anteroom, until some friend had departed. I heard words in an adjoining closet, and knew the voice of Louisa--for such was the name of the fair creature who had claimed so much interest from me.

"Why will not you, my dearest Louisa?" said the soft voice of a young man. "This is terrible! Think, love, meditate, what will be the dreadful issue! Oh, sweet, angelic being! why were you fated to make me adore you for acting against those wishes I now breathe in your ear? Ask the doctor; tell him the awful secret, that our happiness depends on ten written letters of a name; and he has only to say write, and it is written."

"I have already tried to speak to him, but I cannot. Alfred, I see our danger. My aunt, I fear, is dying. The L20,000 left her by her husband goes to a sordid wretch, his brother, if she dies without a will. There is none on earth she loves but me and Alfred. O beloved Alfred! you alone divide, with that angelic woman, the affection of your Louisa. You are poor; I know it; I have wept for it. I have nothing on this earth. If she die without a will, we are beggars, and her last breath will wail our destiny, and her last tear tell her too late her unavailing sympathy. I know all this. It is my night thought, my day dream, my love's whisper, my Alfred's theme; but, God help me, I cannot break this subject to the doctor; my very heart bounds within my bosom at the thought of raising one slight fear in the breast of that woman to whom I owe all the happiness I have ever experienced upon earth. What, oh, what shall be done, Alfred?"

I heard her sobs burst from her, as she sought for sympathy in the bosom of her lover.

"Louisa, love, lift up your head," he answered. "You are sacrificing both of us to a feeling which that excellent woman herself would pronounce a weakness and a cruelty to both you and her. Think, love, what shall be the thoughts, the agonies, of your aunt, if she finds herself firmly locked in the arms of death, and her hands bound up, by his rigid grasp, from obeying the dictates of a bursting, breaking heart. The thought that Augustus Germain, the man she hates, inherits all her fortune, and that her dear Louisa is left by her a beggar, will drag her parting spirit to the confines of the flesh, and torture it in the body's expiring struggle. You tremble at rousing in her a fear of death, by the mention of the will; and you inflict a thousand agonies, by leaving her unprepared for that death when it comes. Louisa, Louisa, lift up your head, and say if these are not the words of truth."

A silence succeeded these words. The girl was in tears, and her feelings choked her reply.

"I feel that you have spoken truth, Alfred," said she; "yet I cannot do it, I cannot--I will rather be a beggar."

"And you _will_ be a beggar, sweet but deluded girl," rejoined the lover; "and Alfred, who would have died for his Louisa, will be also a beggar, through her weakness. Love is hated by the Fates."

Another pause intervened, of some moments.

"But, Alfred," resumed the sobbing girl, "if--if--oh, I tremble at the word--if my aunt should die without a will, and your Louisa, in place of having twenty thousand pounds, is, as she will be, a beggar--will your love for me, Alfred--ah, I choke--the thought swells my heart----"

"I know it--I know it, Louisa," replied he; "mention it not--it is well that your swelling heart binds up the treacherous word--would not Louisa, with all her aunt's wealth, take Alfred, who has nothing--shall not Alfred, who has nothing, take his Louisa, a beggar? Lovely girl! good, elevated, and noble as you are, I question if you sufficiently appreciate the devotedness of your Alfred. But, Louisa, think again of what I have said. I see you again to-morrow. Oh, how time flies, when I think of your aunt!--how it lags when I think of you! Think--think, ere it be too late."

"I cannot--I cannot," replied she.

There was an embrace; he departed, and the disconsolate Louisa sat and wept bitterly alone.

The servant came and told me that Mrs Germain was now alone. I hastened to her. She was, as usual, on the couch. The disease was gradually progressing, but without making much of external ravage; and her spirits were as good as usual.

"Ha, doctor," she said, briskly, as I went forward, "that was Augustus Germain who now went from me. Know you him? He is the brother of my deceased husband; and now, when I am ailing, though, Heaven be praised, not dying, he has begun to sneak about me, for his own private ends. I have not seen his face these six months. Do you know he is in my power? I can leave the whole fortune I got from his brother past him--to whom I please. Ha! ha!"

"And do you intend, madam, to leave it past him?" replied I, looking in her face gravely.

"Intend!" cried she, with another laugh, which I feared would burst the tumour, and end her life in the instant. "Why, to be sure I do. Louisa Milford shall be my heir, though I had a million for every thousand. That girl, sir, is a jewel beyond the value of all that Golconda could give up from its inmost recesses. She loves Alfred Stanford, a young man as noble in his sentiments, as she is kind, and gentle, and true in her affections; but he is poor, and, praise be to Heaven! I have the means of making them rich and happy."

"And why do you delay this act of kindness and duty," said I, with a look fixed on her eyes, "when you and all others are aware how very brittle a thread life hangs by?"

She looked at me firmly and intently as I pronounced these words, and paused a little, as if she felt some slight shock, which she required to overcome.

"Do _you_ think, sir," replied she, "that I ought not to delay that act?"

"Though you were in perfect health, madam, I should, answer, yes, undoubtedly," said I, with eagerness.

"Then I may as well do it now, when I am only slightly ailing," answered she; recovering, in a moment, from the slight uneasiness I had caused her; "yet, somehow or other, I am so filled with the spirit of life--so young--I mean comparatively--with so many years before me--with such a gay world around me, that I cannot help laughing at making a will. I must put on spectacles, I presume, when I sign it, and look grave and antiquated. Ha! ha! Well, I shall send for old parchment Jenkins in the evening; and, as I would wish you to be present at the execution, I will thank you to make your visit to me in the evening to-morrow. Old Goosequill and you may partake of a glass of my burgundy, vintage '94, on the head of the young widow's settlement."

"I shall attend, madam," said I; "and, if you please, I shall send Mr Jenkins to you just now as I pass."

She eyed me somewhat closely again; but the feeling flew off.

"Do so--do," she replied; and I left her.

As I proceeded out to the main door, I passed the small room where Louisa Milford still sat, with the effect of the extraordinary scene that had taken place between her and the young man called Stanford pressing on her bosom. I stood a moment, and heard distinctly her deep sobs and stifled moans. Her sentiments were beautiful, her conduct noble: she would sacrifice twenty thousand pounds to avoid giving the aunt she loved a moment's uneasiness; and she had resisted the impassioned importunities of a lover, who was suspended between beggary and affluence, and who had adroitly addressed himself to the young heart of love, as well as to the immature judgment of youth. I had no liberty to say one word to her of her aunt's intentions; yet I had for some time resolved to communicate to her the true state of her relative's health, with an injunction to keep the fearful nature of the disease a secret from the patient. I knocked at the door, and was requested to walk in. She was hurriedly occupied in drying up her tears, and removing the signs of grief.

"You have been weeping, Miss Milford," I said; "is it for your aunt?"

"Forbid that I should require to weep for her!" she cried, starting, as if stung with pain. "I cannot bear the idea of that woman being in danger. I have watched your eye daily, and have read in it fearful things; but I will comfort her; she shall never know that there is danger near. I will ward off the sad thought; and oh! sir, for mercy's sake, co-operate with me in my love, while you try to save her from the danger, the thought of which she shall never know!"

The remembrance of what had passed a few minutes before between her and her lover, brought out the full effect of the purity of thought that dictated her impassioned words. I surveyed her for a moment with admiration.

"I did not think my _professional_ eye was so easily read, Miss Milford," I replied. "You have read it correctly. Your aunt cannot live. I have thought it my duty to inform you of this. Her complaint is in the region of the heart, and she will likely die in an instant."

She stood for a moment pale and motionless, as if her heart had suddenly ceased its functions. A slow heaving of the bosom showed the approach of a paroxysm of grief; and I trembled lest the sounds should reach the patient's room. I pointed in the direction silently. She understood me; and the strongest workings of nature were overcome by the strength of her fear to cause pain to her she loved. She struggled against the rising passion, and, turning to me, fell suddenly at my feet, and held up her clasped hands in the direction of my countenance.

"And you will not tell her?" she cried, while struggling sobs impeded her speech; "no, no, pity demands it, and I pray for it--let her live in the hope of life! Say, good sir, for Heaven's sake, that you will conceal it from her, and from all others. None shall know it from me--I will die rather than divulge it. She will thus be happy to the end. She requires no preparation--she is spotless--pure as the child unborn; and as she has lived, so shall she die!"

"It is not my intention to communicate it to her," replied I.

"Ah! thanks, thanks, good sir," she replied, in the same impassioned voice. "Bless you--bless you!"

"But this ignorance, Miss Milford," said I, "prevents a settlement of a patient's worldly affairs."

"If that settlement, in the case of my aunt," replied she, fervently, and turning up her eyes to heaven, "is to be purchased by one moment of pain to her, let Augustus Germain take all."

"Extraordinary sentiment!" muttered I--"extraordinary being!" I left her to her grief, and proceeded to the attorney's house. He was at home, and promised to wait on Mrs Germain that day. He called afterwards, and told me that the will would be ready next evening at seven, when I was requested to attend to witness it, along with him. I attended accordingly. The lady was in her usual state of spirits. She sat up on the couch, arrayed in a superb undress. Miss Milford was not present. I observed her in her own room, as I passed, with Stanford sitting by her, holding one of her hands. The attorney, and one of his clerks, and myself, were the only persons present besides the invalid.

"I am dying to hear a will, Mr Jenkins," said the patient, laughing. "I don't think I ever heard one in my life; for my husband's settlement was a contract of marriage, and I fear there is _some_ difference between the two papers."

Mr Jenkins read the settlement.

"Will you not allow me a glass of wine, doctor?" resumed the invalid, in the same strain. "It may steady my hand. I declare I am as nervous as a young bride."

I poured out a glass of her old burgundy, and gave it to her.

"Here is to my own health first!" said she--"for, you know, I'm an invalid; and, secondly, here is to you all, and may you never be worse than I am until you come to die!"

She took up the pen and began to write her name. I looked over her shoulder. She had written Margaret Germ--and the pen was quivering in her hand. She uttered a scream, and fell back--a corpse. In an instant, Louisa and Stanford rushed into the room.

"Is she dead?" cried the attorney. "The will is not signed. It wants three letters. It is useless."

"She is gone," replied I, "for ever."

Louisa threw herself upon the body of her aunt. Stanford looked on like a statue of marble. The scene was heartrending; for the devoted girl clung with such force to the dead body, that it was with difficulty I could get her detached. The loss of the L20,000 was to her nothing. She did not even hear--at least she understood not the writer, when he cried out that the will wanted three letters, and was void. Her whole soul was occupied with the engrossing idea that her aunt was dead; yet so painful was the thought, that she could not bear to hear the truth, and cried with a loud voice on the dead body to answer her with one word of consolation. All this time, Stanford fixed his eye on the fragment of the name to the will. The three letters were worth a fortune.

"Heavens!" I heard him mutter, "is it so? Are my fears realised, and in this dreadful form? Hope on the very brink of being realised, swallowed by the fell demon of despair!"

Louisa was carried out senseless, and Stanford rushed out of the room like a maniac. The dead body was spread out; the will was rolled up in a scroll; the writer went away; and I sought home with eyes filled with tears.

I afterwards learned that the brother came in as heir. Louisa was, indeed, a beggar; but Stanford married her. They are yet poor, and may remain so for life.

THE GLASS BACK.

I have already laid before the public one well-authenticated case of a false conception of identity, arising from the disease called hypochondria. In that case, as well as in most of the others generally met with, the supposed change of identity that takes place is complete, extending to the whole body, which is imagined to pass into a new form of being, different from man, and often into a piece of matter not imbued with life or motion at all. Of this latter case, by far the best known transmutation is that into some very brittle commodity, such as glass; and this is not to be wondered at, even amidst the darkness of our ignorance of the secret workings of those extraordinary changes which seem to shame even the invention of Ovid; for the idea or fantasy, in that case, is only a peculiar type of the feeling of the nervous apprehension or terror, which is the peculiar pathognomonic symptom of the disease itself. It is not difficult to suppose that, when the heart is filled with fear of personal injury, and yet the eye surveys no cause of danger, the mind itself will supply imaginary causes--and this accordingly we find to be the case; neither does it seem to defy our _a priori_ conceptions, that while imaginary objects of detrimental efficacy shall be conjured up from the depths of a dark fancy, a corresponding notion of peculiar brittleness in the body itself shall be generated, to give plausibility to the pre-existing apprehension of serious evil. Indeed, the two seem to be counterparts of each other; and we have only to proceed a step further, to the species of brittleness or liability to detriment, to come to that extraordinary conception, which almost every doctor of extensive practice has witnessed once or twice in his life--that the body is composed of glass, and therefore in continual danger of being cracked or broken to pieces, from the appulse of objects that are every day impinging upon us without doing us any harm. The frequency of the "glass man" is therefore not a matter of very great wonder to a philosophical mind, after the casual condition of the change is admitted. The case has so often occurred, that it now excites little curiosity; but I question much, if the case of a fancied _partial_ transmutation of the flesh into glass may not, as well from its rarity as its grotesqueness, claim a greater share of interest from the faculty, and from the general reader; and when I state that the instance I have to record was witnessed and studied by myself, with a view to the interests of science--a fact of much importance in all reports of extraordinary conditions of human nature--I need say no more in recommendation of it to the attention of the public.

The unhappy subject of the case was a poor man, called Patrick G----, by trade a tailor--a profession, by the way, which is more productive of hypochondria than any other with which I am acquainted, arising, doubtless, from the sedentary habits of the individuals, combined with their irregular modes of living. I have always noticed a peculiar _outre_ character in the ideas and feelings of people inclined to hypochondria; and those who have been permitted to enter the _penetralia_ of the workshop where the _board_ is covered with these unfortunate beings, will justify the remark, by their experience of the strange sayings, grotesque art, and recondite humour, to be found in the peculiar atmosphere of that temple of taste. I make this allusion, of course, with a scientific view, as elucidating a fine point in psychology, and not in the slightest degree influenced by a love of the mere garbage of the food of an ill-timed curiosity. The peculiarity of thought and feeling, incidental to this class, might easily have been discovered in the individual who was so unfortunate as to require my aid; and all his physical appearances would have justified the anticipation of the peculiarity, before he opened his mouth. His complexion was so decidedly what we call saturnine, that it approached to the colour of green. He was at all times excessively irritable, so much so that he was often attacked with spasmodic affections; and at these times he was so easily acted upon by slight and trifling external causes, that his wife, a very sober and decent woman, required to observe the greatest caution in conducting those affairs of her domestic establishment which interfered with either his mind or body. If he was not in this state of irritability, he was sure to be under the power of an extreme rigidity of solids, and torpor of the nervous system, accompanied by their usual concomitant of melancholy, which suggested even a _bizarrerie_ of thought quite different from that of ordinary men. I thought the seat of his disease was the spleen, in consequence of finding an enlargement of that organ; but I afterwards came to be satisfied that his liver, too, was deranged--an opinion very well justified by what afterwards befel him.

The symptoms I have mentioned continued in the man for a period of a year and a-half; but an aggravation of them became soon thereafter apparent, in a very marked increase of his melancholy, accompanied by a shaking nervousness on being approached by any heavy article, subject to movement. When forced out by his wife for the benefit of his health, he kept the side of the wall, shook at the risk of a jostle, as if a push or drive would have killed him, and ran into closes and avenues, to be out of the reach of carriages that were steadily keeping the middle of the high-road. I have observed these symptoms (to us well known) in very aggravated diseases of the stomach, without very marked derangement of the neighbouring organs; and calmed the fears of his wife, by stating that they would probably abate, as the medicines I gave him (chiefly tonics) began to operate upon his system. I had, notwithstanding, my fears that a deeper type of hypochondria was on the eve of exhibiting itself--an opinion formed chiefly from the study of his eye, which was getting daily heavier and gloomier, more turned to the angle of the orbit, and filled with morbid terror, on the approach of any moving thing, however innocuous. To test further the truth of my deduction, I gave him a gentle push aside, and observed that he shrank as if he had been stung by an adder, retreating back from me, and eyeing me with suspicion and dread, as if I had been about to kill him. He was now, I suspected, on the eve of falling into one of two positions, depending upon the temperament of his mind. He would either (as happens with people of an imaginative turn) create fanciful objects of fear that might do him bodily injury, retaining his conception of personal identity unimpaired, or he would pass into the false conviction of being made of some tender substance, capable of being injured by the approach of external objects, but retaining otherwise his conceptions of external things entire--a result more common to minds of a sedate, phlegmatic kind.

My fears turned out too true. The next time I visited him, I was met by his wife in the passage, who said she wished to speak a few words to me before I entered. She whispered that she feared her husband had entirely lost his senses--for that, on the day previous, he had gone to bed, where he had lain ever since in the same position--_on his face_; and yet, so far as she could ascertain, there was nothing the matter with his back. When she asked him why he lay in that extraordinary position, he turned up a piteous eye in her face, and replied, with a sigh that came from the deepest part of his chest, that she would know that soon enough, requesting her, for the sake of Heaven's mercy and a wife's love, not to touch him, and to keep the bedclothes as light upon him as it was ever, ever in her power to do. I could not, even by the power of anticipation, derived from an ample experience of diseases of this sort, divine the peculiarity of this patient's complaint; but I was soon to have sufficient evidence to unravel the mystery.

On going forward to him, I observed that he was carefully laid on his face, with just so much of his left eye exposed as to serve for a watch over his body, and exhibit the apprehension which filled his soul, and engrossed every other feeling.

"Why in this position?" said I. "The back is the resting-place of patients. Turn, and you will experience the truth of what I say."

"Turn!--oh, that I could!" said he; "but, alas, alas! I dare not; I dare not." And he accompanied his words with a peculiar nervous glance, indicating great uneasiness and fear.

"Why?" rejoined I.

"Ah, sir," he cried, in a choking voice, "I must keep this side uppermost. Glass is brittle, very brittle. I dare not turn; the crash--ay, sir, the crash--would be tremendous. I would be in a hundred pieces in a moment. Dreadful thought!--Do not touch me, for Heaven's sake! approach me not. It is brittle, brittle--ah, very, very brittle!"

These words he accompanied with the same glance of intense fear. I saw at once where the secret lay; but the poor wife stared with glaring eyes, as if she had seen a spectre. She understood nothing; but she watched her husband's eye, and she had never seen there such a wild light before. Argument in such cases is altogether _hors d'oeuvre_, or rather it does much injury, and my course lay in a direction entirely opposite. I had first the precise vitreous locality to discover, which could be done only by an expression of belief of his extraordinary condition.

"Calm yourself," said I; "we will deal with you quietly. Which is the dangerous part?"

I laid my hand between his shoulders, and the bedclothes shook with the tremor of his limbs.

"I never can _sit_ more upon this earth,"[1] he cried, and then paused and sighed. "My occupation's gone," he continued, in the same trembling, choking voice. "Merciful powers, what is to become of one of my profession, if he cannot sit without a crash? Do I not make my bread sitting? and yet, sir, I put it to you--I put it to you who know the strength of a window pane--how can I sit? how can I ever earn a livelihood for that weeping wife? Terrible! terrible!"

[Footnote 1: A case of this kind occurred also in or near the town of Dundee in Scotland, where the glass was limited to the same regions--below the lumbars.]

His wife, still at a loss for an explanation, looked into my face, where she saw the gravity of a philosophic doctor contemplating one of the miseries of his fellow-creatures, and, besides, interested scientifically in the case before me--one of partial vitrification, where the seat of the fancied transmutation was curiously connected with the prior habits of the individual. The case was serious; and, though I did not wish, by an expression of my real apprehensions, to frighten the poor woman, I could not belie my feelings, by assuming any appearance of carelessness, far less of levity, which I did not in sincerity feel. I could do nothing for the invalid in the position in which he now was, and left him, to consider what plan I should fall upon to dispossess him of this false belief, which, with all the determination and perversity of his complaint, had taken a firm hold of his mind.

Next morning, the patient's wife called upon me, and stated that she had got alarmed at the state of her husband, in consequence of his extraordinary conduct when she endeavoured to get his couch spread up for their night's repose. On taking hold of him, though she did it in the gentlest manner possible, with a view to assist him out of the bed, he screamed out that she was breaking him to fragments, with such vociferation that the neighbours flocked in, to ascertain what was the cause. She could give no proper explanation; for, although she had already got some insight into the nature of the disease, she felt ashamed to exhibit the weakness of her husband; but he, who felt no delicacy on the subject, accused her, with tears in his eyes, of an intention to break him into pieces; called her a cruel woman, and appealed to several of those present whether it was reasonable to suppose that a person who had a part of his body made of glass could be safely handled in the rough manner in which the careless and temerarious woman had begun to touch and move him from the only safe position he could ever enjoy on earth. The poor woman wept as she told me that his speech was received by the neighbours with a loud laugh. I sympathised with her, and told her, with much grave and real sincerity, that I would do everything I could for her husband; and in the meantime recommended her again to try to get him out of bed by the hour of twelve, when I would call and see him, and try some remedy for him.

I called accordingly, but found that the wife's efforts had proved unavailing; he was still in bed on his face, and murmuring strong and bitter reproaches against his helpmate, whom he eyed with an expression of mixed anger and terror.

"Is it not horrible, sir," he vociferated, "that a woman should attempt to take the life of her husband? Say, as a Christian and a man, if I ought not to be handled in a manner suitable to the nature of the substance of which a part of my body is composed? Heavens! 'tis dreadful to be damaged irretrievably by the hands of one who should treat me more softly than others. Ha! my queen, you wish to get quit of me!--but I shall guard the vital and brittle parts from your evil intention. My hands and arms are still of flesh and blood."

I tried to convince him that his wife had no evil intention towards him; but he continued to throw at her wild glances, in which there was apparent, however, much more terror than anger. I tried him on the question of rising; but he fixed his eye upon my face with a piteous expression, and said, in a calm, serious tone--

"Would you, sir, rise if you were in my position, with the danger staring you in the face of being crushed or broken by the first hard substance you came against. What would be my consolation in having the most important part of the body--at least to men of my profession--picked up in fragments, and laid in my coffin?"

"Better run the risk of being damaged," said I, seriously, "than starve in your bed. Your wife says you have work lying to do, and that there is no money in the house."

This statement produced a strong effect upon him. He shook between the horns of the dilemma in which he was placed, and threw a look at me, which said plainly, "Is not my situation horrible and heartrending?" But I retained the sternness of my expression, and yielded him no sympathy where I felt it to be my duty to use severity. I thought it better to leave him in this mood, and took my leave. I had made the statement regarding the necessity of working, at random, and was very well pleased to have it confirmed by Mrs G----, who followed me to the door, and told me that she was, indeed, in great perplexity, in consequence of a large order for mournings having come in that morning, and the two apprentices could do absolutely nothing to it. The case was one of domestic calamity, which I could do little to ameliorate, beyond giving another recommendation to her to strain every effort to get him up.

Something occurred to prevent me calling next day; but on the next day after I waited upon my unhappy patient. The bed was empty. I looked round, and saw no one in the apartment. I was surprised, and dreaded some additional misfortune; but Mrs G----, who came out of the small room in which her husband wrought, stepped cautiously up to me, and whispered in my ear, that he had that morning got up, with the determination to commence work; but that he was still under the same delusion. "Come here," she added, retreating softly to the workshop. I followed her; and, at her desire, directed my eye through a small opening by the side of the door, which was partially open. A most extraordinary sight was exhibited to me. Two apprentices were sitting on a board, working fiercely at the mournings, and holding their heads down, as I thought, to prevent their cruel laughter from being seen by their unfortunate master, who was clearly the cause of their ill-timed and mischievous merriment. At a little distance from them, with his back turned to the wall, was my pale and emaciated patient, busy sewing--_on his feet_!

"Is not that a dreadful sight, sir?" whispered Mrs G---- in my ear, with a woful countenance. "He has stood in that awful position since six o'clock this morning. He can come no speed; and see you how his apprentices are biting their lips, and holding down their heads to conceal their merriment?"

I was too much occupied studying the motions and appearance of the invalid, to reply to the statement of his wife. He was standing in such a situation that no one could get behind him. There was a deep melancholy over his countenance, which was grotesquely relieved by the nervous light of his grey twinkling eye, as he lifted it at times from the piece of cloth he was busy with, and threw it fearfully in the direction of the apprentices, as if he watched their motions. It was clear that he laboured under an apprehension that some effort would be made to get him to sit, and that he was, _mordicus_, determined that he would not be broken and immolated in that way--from all which I was satisfied that his wife, or some other person, had been already that day making some attempt upon him to get him to sit down, and thus roused him to the state in which I now saw him. He looked as if he felt the truth of the motto, _nusquam tuta fides_. He had faith in none, and was on the quick watch to guard and save himself. The sight was undoubtedly an interesting one, in more respects than as a scientific study of one strange phase of human nature; but the only feature in it that surprised me was, that the patient was working with so much ardour--because lethargy, with a total prostration of spirit, is the prevailing symptom of the disease. I could only account for this anomaly, by supposing that the old excitement of a job of mournings had, for a time, overcome the depressing energies of his complaint.

I had meditated a curative process to be applied when he got out of bed; but he was now evidently too much on the quick alert from his alarm, for its application at that time--his studied proximity to the wall excluding all hope of getting behind him; and I augured, besides, some relief from his application to business. I therefore told Mrs G---- that it would be improper to rouse his fears farther by any unsuccessful attempt at dislodging, from his addled brain, his false belief, and that I would call next day, when his confidence in those around him might, in some measure, be restored.

On my calling next day at the same hour, Mrs G---- informed me that he had continued working on his feet for the greater part of the preceding day--turned himself fearfully round when he required to move, so as to keep the supposed brittle region out of the reach of all danger; when he retired to bed, he had laid himself on his face; and he was again working assiduously, in a standing position, in the same way as when I saw him last. I again applied myself to the opening, and satisfied myself that the statement I had received was correct. The scene presented all the extraordinary features--the same standing position, cadaverous face, and nervous watchful eye, in the patient, and the same look of mystery, wonder, and repressed risibility on the part of the apprentices. I opened the door, and entered, requesting Mrs G---- to bring me a chair, on which I sat down right opposite to the patient, who, almost simultaneously with these movements, retreated back, and, coming in contact with the wall of the room, uttered a sudden scream of fear, and again resumed his position. His wife looked at him with pity and affection; but the rebellious apprentices broke forth into a cachinnation, which I instantly repressed by a look, which conveyed a serious reproof, as sincere as it was strong and stern. I proceeded to endeavour to acquire his confidence; but he exhibited great shyness, and kept up a studied system of eyeing me askant, placing his back as near to the wall as he thought consistent with his safety, and keeping a sharp look-out for intruders in that direction. To my inquiry how he felt, he replied, peevishly, that he was so utterly beyond the powers of medicine, that he did not see the use of my visits.

"Heaven help me!" he ejaculated; "I am safe nowhere but in my bed. No necessity will draw me from it, if I'm once there again. My ungrateful wife may starve. I will turn off these rebellious, unfeeling scoundrels. I am sure rounded by enemies, murderers, who would laugh if they saw me cracked in a thousand pieces. They gloat on my screams, as they take every opportunity to pass behind me and jostle me. Better be dashed at once like a potsherd among stones, than exposed to this horrible state of eternal apprehension."

"You nourish vain fears," replied I. "Why not try to sit and compose yourself?"

"Ha! ha! ha!" he cried, with a shrill, sardonic movement of his lungs--"sit on a glass globe!--ha! ha!--all enemies together--murderers all. It is not three hours yet since that woman placed a chair for me, and one of these unfeeling ruffians asked me, with a sneaking, whining sympathy, to take my place on the board, while his ears were tingling for the crash. I'll swear a lawburrows against you all--every mother's son of you."

"You may at least try to sit," said I, calmly rising from the chair--a movement that operated upon him like magnetism--making him throw down the cloth he held in his hand, recoil still farther back, and scream again, loud and shrill.