The Second Life of Doctor Albin

by Raoul Gineste

  The visitors had received the order to leave in order to make way for the official delegations. He found himself back on the street in the middle of an incessantly growing crowd that the police had difficulty restricting to the sidewalks. Soon the butts of rifles clattered on the pavement, and the dull rumble of an artillery battery was heard. The representatives of the government and the school of medicine in formal dress, magistrates, academicians, superior officers of all the military services and even senior members of the clergy had come into the courtyard and were gathering in their respective places.

  The coffin was placed on the pompous plumed hearse, where sprays and wreaths of flowers were heaped up, and the cortege moved off.

  Hardened as Jacques Liban’s heart was, and although he had followed the road that he was traveling today many times in thought, he could not remain indifferent to the grandeur of the spectacle and the respectful emotion of the crowd, whose tightly packed ranks formed thick hedges.

  The professors in scarlet or purple robes, the groups of students from all the Universities, the dress uniforms whose braid scintillated in the sunlight, the glorious men holding the cordons of the pall, the giant wreaths carried on stretchers, the drums veiled with crepe, the military bands whose funeral marches seemed to summarize and translate a universal grief, and the multitude of unknown friends who were gravely following the cortege, plunged him into a kind of anxious intoxication.

  For the second time, he was ashamed of what he had done.

  Was that social suicide not stained with sacrilege? Had not the favors and honors with which he had been so lavishly heaped created special obligations toward the society that he was deceiving so brazenly? By what right had he made himself the unwitting accomplice of this macabre and solemn masquerade?

  In the name of Truth, his conscience replied. By the right that Dr. Albin had to die, and the right that I, henceforth his enemy and contradictor, have to live, added his pride. Has Dr. Albin not died officially on the field of honor? Let someone tell the contrary to the surgeons who had recognized him and all the people following his convoy. One sole being was alive: Jacques Liban might, if the worst came to the worst, be the victim or the plaything of this adventure. There was, therefore, no knavery or lie that injured humankind.

  And the villages burned and hundreds of innocents massacred, and the soldiers who died to avenge Dr. Albin’s death? his conscience murmured.

  Bah! That was the excess inherent in the abominable scourge of war. It was a collective crime in which his illustrious past had, in fact, played a large part, but for which he, Jacques Liban, was no longer responsible.

  The cortege was engulfed by the porch of Notre-Dame. As a sign of mourning, the Hôtel-Dieu had veiled its doors with black. Pale invalids and convalescents in gray gowns appeared at the windows and raised their nightcaps respectfully. A regret more intense than the others gripped him. He would probably never again cross the threshold of the refuges of suffering where he had struggled so many times against death.

  But was it not his pride as an admired clinician that was making him experience that chagrin? He would no longer hold forth by the beds of poor devils, surrounded by a circle of fervent admirers. What would prevent him from lavishing cares as efficacious and more discreet on other wretches?

  In the immense nave of the cathedral hung in black, while the senior priest of Notre-Dame celebrated the sacrifice of the mass, the choir sang the De profundis and the Requiem; then the venerable Cardinal Archbishop of Paris, surrounded by his clergy, came to pronounce the absolution solemnly; the Dies irae’s cries of menace resounded in the depths of the vaults, and the convoy took the road to Père-Lachaise.

  Less emotional now, Jacques Liban watched the people and events with more self-composure.

  The groups already had a different appearance; the gravity and silence were by no means as marked as at the beginning; oddments of conversation were being exchanged now; distracted gazes were shifting to the right and left; friends were recognizing one another and meeting up in order to walk together. Even the crowd seemed less reserved and more curious; altercations rose up in its ranks, gestures pointed out famous people and acclamations greeted a group of radical députés as they passed by.

  Soon the cortege picked up speed, and people deserted it at every crossroads. The official delegations and patriotic societies, to be sure, stuck to their duty until the end, some with bored and preoccupied expressions, while others consulted their watches; one divined that they were in haste to get back to business, or the hour for dinner was soliciting them.

  Jacques Liban was not astonished by that change of attitude; had he not done likewise many a time?

  In the Rue de la Roquette, the conversations became noisier and more free-flowing. Drawn by habit, he too experienced the need to interrogate his neighbor, an obese man who as continually mopping his brow.

  “Did you know Dr. Albin?”

  “No, Monsieur. Did you?”

  “I knew him…slightly.”

  “Not at all, myself. I didn’t even know he existed, but as yesterday’s newspaper recounted the details of his horrible death in Tonkin, my wife said to me: As you have nothing to do tomorrow you ought to go to the burial, because it will give you a little exercise and you’ll see some famous people, hear the speeches and...”

  The unknown man had moved away toward other groups.

  Some were talking finance, politics, commerce or theater. Others, local physicians, were calculating the fortune that the deceased must have accumulated.

  “How much did they pay for his visits?” one asked.

  “Four louis, and two for his consultations.”

  “And to think that for a hundred sous, or even three francs,” a third added, bitterly, “we do more ingrate and more disagreeable work, and the clients still find excellent reasons for cheating us out of our honoraria.”

  “Renown, my dear, has welcomed you as a hospital physician, and you can flay your patients without making them cry out. The public demand guarantees; they suppose, most often with reason but sometimes wrongly, that a man clad in all the official titles is better able to cure them. Then, what economists call the law of supply and demand comes into play. Our colleagues in view, solicited by too many clients, are obliged to diminish their number by raising the price of their collaboration.”

  “But the medical profession isn’t commerce!”

  “An old song, my dear—it’s an apostolate…when Society or the State gives us the means of existence.”

  He slipped into a group of military surgeons who looked at the intruder suspiciously.

  “Jacques Liban, editor of the American Chemist,” he said to his neighbor.

  The professor at the Val-de-Grâce bowed graciously. “You see, Monsieur,” he said to the foreigner, “that France knows how to honor knowledge and bravery.”

  “All those who die struck by an enemy bullet don’t receive such honors,” the American insinuated. “It’s the personality of Dr. Albin, not his virtues, to which these homages are being rendered.”

  “The example that comes from above has more impact on the crowd.”

  “Because the ignorant crowd is unjust; otherwise, merit and devotion would only have more value when they’re obscure.”

  The suspicious gaze of the old soldier made him understand that he was out of order. He let a few ranks pass and found himself among teachers, among whom he recognized Dr. Perraud, an unfortunate former rival of Dr. Albin, a conscientious scholar whose modesty had always relegated him to the background.

  A name than he had just overheard excited his curiosity to the highest degree.

  “It’s said that you loved her madly,” said the interlocutor to the old professor.

  “It’s true,” Perraud replied.

  “Why didn’t you ask for her hand?”

  “I didn’t dare; I was poor, practically unknown; she was rich and the daughter of an influential professor. She would have thought that I was only mo
tivated by interest.”

  A snigger of pity greeted that confession of that naïve delicacy.

  “She’s free now—enter the lists!”

  “I’m too old, and it’s too late, as you know full well; the other was able to find the way to her heart.”

  “It’s said, in fact, that Larmezan...”

  “It’s not true—or, at least, only half true. Madame Albin, beneath her frivolous appearance, is naturally honest, but her husband neglected her too much. She’s beautiful and good—I’ve never understood Albin’s blindness. She loved him.…”

  “Do you think so?”

  “She loved him, I tell you, in spite of the neglect, in spite of everything; a simple misunderstanding doubtless separated them.”

  “He loved her too, then?”

  “As much as an ambitious scientist can love his wife—which is to say, less than his work, less than his honors and less than his glory.”

  “In a latent state, then—an amorous state that women scarcely understand and don’t admit.”

  “They’re right. A life together is made of reciprocal concessions; love has need of manifestations and tenderness. Marriage isn’t only an alliance of interests; if the worship of science or arts has to come before anything else, let’s do as priests do and refrain from marrying. It’s the decision that we’d all make if we were wise. The children that we make—our works—serve humankind usefully, and the Fatherland will forgive us our celibacy.”

  “And nature?”

  “Nature! We render her the homage she merits and the duties she imposes on us, of course.”

  “In a brothel, once a week? You’re raving, Perraud.”

  “Then accept marriage with all its duties, all the charges and inconveniences it involves. Don’t take a wife to serve as a stepping-stone and forget her afterwards.”

  “Dr. Albin wasn’t as casual as that!”

  “Very nearly, but it was written that he’d have every chance. In spite of the Benedictine life, made to exasperate a young woman who was elegant, pretty, avid for life, happy to shine, his wife, an elite intelligence, always respected the illustrious name she bore.”

  “And Larmezan?”

  “It was natural, given the increasingly egoistical indifference of her husband, that she had a certain penchant for someone who never missed an opportunity to flatter her tastes and distract her. Larmezan was thus the servant cavalier, the preferred friend, and nothing more. If he’d been the lover, Albin might have been able to remain ignorant, but believe me, I would have known; I would have divined it.”

  The teacher continued, sadly: “Now, the situation is quite different. Death has destroyed the obstacles; Larmezan isn’t a man embarrassed by overmuch delicacy. It’s probable—I could even say certain—that he’ll marry his master’s widow and be appointed professor. It’s him, at any rate, who’s leading the mourning.”

  Although, rationally, Jacques Liban, no longer had anything to debate with Dr. Albin’s self-esteem, he was nevertheless not sorry to learn that the latter had only played Sganarelle.14 The conversation that his appearance as an American scholar had permitted him to overhear was not absolutely true; the portrait of Madame Albin had been made by a painter visibly too much in love with his model; her husband had not forgotten his conjugal duties at any point. If his absorbing labors had rendered him egotistical and indifferent, she, for her part, had not made any effort or any sacrifice to conquer his affection. Apart from a few exaggerated or false details, however, the ensemble was accurate. Perhaps Dr. Albin would not have admitted it, but Jacques Liban, more disinterested, had been forced to recognize it. And suddenly, knowing that she was appreciated and loved by others, the widowed Madame Albin appeared to him in a new light.

  Is Perraud’s admiration contagious? he wondered.

  The conversation, momentarily interrupted, had returned to the illustrious deceased.

  “What a bizarre idea to go in search of death in Tonkin,” one of them remarked.

  “Albin’s determination didn’t surprise me overmuch,” replied Dr. Perraud. “Although the chagrin caused by his daughter’s death had, so to speak, put him off his stride, his combativeness and, let’s say the word, his pride, couldn’t remain inactive for long. Acquired notoriety and glory is insufficient for such minds. They’re always aiming higher, but it’s the immediate result that they seek; the slow and obscure work that posterity will acclaim can’t content them; they want to enjoy their triumph and are always running after new conquests. They’re unsatisfied; their ambition drives them to all kinds of metamorphoses. Art, science, politics and the battlefield attract them by turns. So their brilliant work almost always lacks foundation and is only temporary. They brush the surface of everything but don’t plumb the depths of anything.”

  “What about the Biological Chemistry?”

  The Biological Chemistry will suffer the fate of hundreds, thousands of scientific theories that have preceded it. Posterity will put it in its place. It will recognize that Dr. Albin added his stone to the communal edifice, but how many others, misunderstood today, will shine alongside him and perhaps eclipse his glory.”

  “You’re an interested party,” muttered the unknown, but added: Well reasoned, all the same, Perraud; I’m not sorry to have heard those words. Jacques Liban will henceforth pursue one single goal: to destroy the false work of Dr. Albin and publish his principles of Dynamic Chemistry.

  “Were you present at the exhumation of the remains?” someone asked.

  “No,” the teacher replied. “I know, though, that the cadaver was in an advanced state of decomposition, and that Larmezan, having already taken anthropometric measurements of his master, repeated the experiment on the head accompanying Albin’s body.”

  “And he concluded?”

  “Evidently that it really was our regretted colleague’s head, since he didn’t raise any objection on that subject.”

  Jacques Liban was delivered from his final doubt.

  Someone existed who could have objected, who was surely certain as to the inauthenticity of that head, and that man had said nothing! Dr. Albin was, therefore, really dead, irrevocably dead, and in a few minutes, when the slabs of the crypt were sealed over the coffin he was accompanying, Jacques Liban, still plunged into limbo unless then, would have acquired, definitively, the right to live and to act!

  Further away, the official delegates, constrained to greater gravity, were only exchanging rare comments. There, doubtless, he was being judged by his peers in eulogies full of reticence and implication. What did all that matter now? Was he not soon to become, himself, the pitiless detractor of the illustrious dead man? Had he any need to observe once again the ingratitude of the obligated and the jealousy of rivals? Was he not awaiting, on the contrary, critics a hundred times more unjust, a hundred times more acerbic?

  Fundamentally, all these people were indifferent to him. Had he not been like them? What were the veritable griefs he had experienced? Those caused to him by the deaths of his relatives, and no others. What reciprocity did Dr. Albin have the right to expect from all that official company?

  Often, it is true, a temporary chagrin had darkened his soul at the disappearance of a friend or someone he admired, but that was one of those afflictions that is quickly chased away with a strong dose of the natural philosophy with which every combative man is provided. So-and-so is dead, what a pity! He was a great artist, a great poet, a great scientist. But we’re all mortal, aren’t we? Others come, others will—make way for the others...

  What should all those people say, even the most sympathetic, except what he had said himself in similar circumstances, without hatred, without envy, driven by the egotistical and instinctive need that we have to conquer a large place in the sun?

  Dr. Albin certainly had no cause for complaint; the dolor that was accompanying him to his last abode was as profound, as complete and as true as any official dolor can be,

  The procession traversed the Place de la Roq
uette. All gazes turned toward the place sprinkled with human blood by the executioner’s blade.

  “The decapitated individual who is being borne triumphantly to the refuge of the dead,” sniggered the mysterious stranger, “perhaps merited ending up there. Bandits, blind instruments of destiny, took responsibility for carrying out the task. Perhaps there was some element of genius in his crime that merited these honors.”

  The cortege bunched at the entrance to the vast necropolis.

  To the sound of vibrant fanfares, the troops had filed martially past the cart. Then the delegations had gone to the family tomb, where the gaping crypt awaited its new guest, and, around the coffin ready to descend into the darkness, a compact circle had formed over which the respectful silence and restrained emotion of the first hour hung.

  A dozen speeches were read or pronounced. Unknown friends and rivals lavished the same eulogies, formulated the same regrets. All of them celebrated the marvelous discoveries of Dr. Albin, praised the ardent patriotism that had led him to his death, affirmed that he would enter into glory and immortality, decreed that his example would engender heroes, and that his work, a torch for humankind, would cast its dazzling light until the end of time. All of them implored the young men to take him as a model, to follow in his tracks, to honor, as he had, French Science, and to be, like him, ready to die for the Fatherland!

  If all that they’re saying were sincere and true, thought Jacques Liban, I’d never be able to destroy a reputation so well usurped; fortunately, hyperbole and the flowers of rhetoric grow vigorously in the garden of funeral orations.

  The soldiers fired the salvo of honor; a priest in a surplice sprinkled holy water on the coffin; it was taken down into the tomb. He heard the friction of ropes and the dull sound of the bier touching the floor. Then workmen swiftly sealed the slabs, while others heaped up the wreaths and flowers; a cemetery garden closed the entrance to the sepulcher, and the stranger found himself alone.