Martyrs of Science

by S. Henry Berthoud

  “The Marquis, surprised to discover so much knowledge and intelligence in the man he had found dressed in rags, did not take long to conceive a considerable affection for his nurse. He did not want to receive care from anyone but Salomon, and refused to give admittance to the physicians that his family summoned. He had no reason to regret that resolution, for two months after his fall he was completely cured.

  “One morning, he went into the room that Salomon occupied in his house, close to his sick-room, and found him occupied in writing and drawing bizarre diagrams. ‘Master Solomon,’ he said, ‘I owe you my life; I have to need to tell you how grateful I am and how much affection I have for you. Put a price on your services, therefore; if I cannot repay you in full, at least I can show you that I’m not an ingrate. Speak sincerely, and don’t hesitate to open your heart to me. If you care to attach yourself to my household, you’ll fulfill my dearest wish and will find in me, not a master, but a friend.’

  “Salomon raised his head, cast an eye over his papers, as if he were reluctant to set them aside, and replied distractedly: ‘Monseigneur, before long I shall possess fortune and glory. A few more days and I will have completed the design of a machine destined to change the face of the word. Deign, therefore, to grant me a refuge in our house until my work is completely finished, and then obtain me a audience with Monseigneur le Cardinal, and you will have fulfilled all my desires.’

  “‘I hope to do more for you, my dear Salomon,’ the Marquis said. ‘I shall see you soon.’

  “He went down to the courtyard of the house and found the Marquise, who was waiting for him on the perron. ‘Monseigneur,’ she said to him, ‘your squire tells me that you intend to ride the unruly horse that nearly cost you your life the other day; out of affection for me, don’t do that.’

  “‘That would be weakness,’ the Marquis replied. ‘It’s necessary that I prove to the malicious creature that I’m not afraid of him, and that I’m able to reckon with him. Have no fear, Madame.’

  “So saying, he kissed the Marquise and leapt on to the horse. Scarcely had the impetuous beast felt a man on its back than it started kicking and bucking, and exhibiting the greatest fury. The Marquis held firm and true, used the whip and the spurs, struggled, resisted and manipulated the bridle skillfully. After a quarter of a hour, victory finally went to the rider, and the stallion, bathed with sweat, became pliant and docile to the bit, like the calmest of mares.

  “Delighted with his triumph, the Marquis turned to the reassured Marquise with a smile, saluted her with his hand, and departed at a gallop.

  “Just as he was about to go through the gate of the residence, a domestic, who was holding a cooking-pot, appeared at the end of the street. The sunlight, falling directly upon the copper vessel, was reflected resplendently, producing a dazzling light. At the sight of that glare, which suddenly hurt its eyes, the horse reared up, throwing its rider to the ground, fractured his skull with a kick, and killed him on the spot, before the eyes of the distressed Marquise.

  “It did not take long to discover that the copper cauldron that had caused such a great misfortune belonged to Salomon, who had bought it back from the carpenter to whom he had previously sold it. The steward took advantage of that excuse to expel from the house a man whose credit with the Marquis had made him jealous so many times. Salomon did not put up any resistance, and headed for the Cardinal’s palace, where he solicited an audience with the Minister, making use of the name of his former protector in attempting to reach the man who held the destiny of France in his hands.

  “After long solicitations, he succeeded in obtaining that audience. The Cardinal, who was in pain, and whose struggles with the king had thrown him into one of the nervous commotions that afflicted him so frequently, received Salomon harshly.

  “‘You’ve been seeking an audience with me for a month now,’ he said, in a low and bitter voice. ‘What do you want?’

  “‘Monseigneur,’ Salomon replied, ‘I’m the possessor of a secret that might ensure His Very Christian Majesty power over the entire world. Henceforth, vessels will have no more need of sails, and the speed of navigation will be multiplied a hundredfold. Carriages will move without horses.’

  “‘And what means will you employ to bring about these marvels?’

  “‘The steam of boiling water.’

  “The cardinal picked up a silver whistle from his waist and blew a shrill blast on it. An officer appeared.

  “‘Since when are madmen allowed access to me!’ he exclaimed. ‘Throw this man out!’

  “‘Monseigneur!’ cried Salomon. ‘In the name of Heaven, don’t refuse to listen to me. However impossible they may seem to you, the marvels of which I speak can be executed before your eyes as soon as you wish. My life will answer for the success—take my head as a hostage! Steam is an energetic force.’

  “The cardinal made a gesture with his head and Salomon was dragged away.

  “Salomon drew his dagger to resist those who had seized him...”

  Jean abruptly interrupted himself; his hand extended toward the bottle, but his strength failed him and he fell back into his chair. He tried to speak, but no voice emerged from his lips and he fell like an inert mass at my feet.

  I cannot tell you what I experienced then. The thunder was rumbling, the lightning flashing, the rain lashing the windows. A mass of smoke and ashes, whipped up by the wind, suddenly erupted from the fireplace and extinguished my lamp.

  I confess that at that moment, a veritable fear took hold of me, and I called for help.

  Two attendants came running, and hastened to lavish care on poor Jean—who, in spite of their efforts, remained motionless, as if life had abandoned him.

  The two men, realizing that their assistance remained powerless to reanimate the epileptic, carried him to the infirmary.

  I spent all night in the most mortal anxiety. Several times I went out to ask the attendant whether the fatal crisis that had struck Jean had lost its violence, but I could not succeeded in gaining entry to the epileptics’ section. The rules of Bicêtre expressly forbade any person not on the staff of the establishment to go into its wards by night.

  I saw Jean again the next morning. He had resumed his silent and humble behavior.

  “Well, Jean,” I asked him, “are you feeling much better this morning?”

  He hastened to take off his cap to salute, looked at me with a surprised expression, and replied in a voice that was even more respectful than usual: “It happens so often that it’s not worth the trouble of talking about it.”

  “But wasn’t last night’s crisis more terrible than any other?”

  “Last night? Is Monsieur not mistaken? It was in the evening, when I came back to the ward, that the illness struck…but perhaps Monsieur is right. I doubtless had two crises during the day. My poor head is so sick! I can scarcely remember what happened to me an hour ago.”

  He bent down in order to poke the fire, picked up a broom and set about his humble functions in silence. After which he advanced toward his cauldron and prepared to hoist it on to his shoulder, as usual.

  “Couldn’t you finish yesterday’s story now, Jean?” I said. “I’m very impatient to know how it ends.”

  He looked at me as if I were speaking a foreign language, about something unknown. He did not seem to understand my question.

  “A story?” he repeated.

  “Yes—the story of your cauldron.”

  “Well, my God,” he said, “that’s a very simple story. The cauldron belonged to a poor madman who lived for fifty years imprisoned in a padded cell at Bicêtre, where he had been thrown on Cardinal Richelieu’s orders. Like all madmen, he protested against the order that kept him captive, and claimed to be in possession of his reason. If he could be believed, he knew marvelous secrets that would enable carriages move without horses and give them the rapidity of a bird in flight. Unfortunately, he never failed to add that he was pursued by a curse, that a witch had cast a spell on the
copper cauldron found in his home in Paris and brought to Bicêtre with the debris of his possessions, in which his nourishment was now served to him. He begged for someone to take the cauldron away from his cell, and flew into the most violent fits of anger at the refusal or the warders in that matter. Nothing was done about it. He was let alone, and during the fifty years he spent in the asylum, he had that utensil before his eyes.

  “However, he had been heard to insist so often, during that half-century, on the deadly properties of the vessel, that after the old man’s death, no one wanted to make use of it. Before I arrived here it stayed in a corner, where it did not fail to justify, by way of two or three accidents, its evil renown. Once it fell from a nail on which it had been hung and mortally wounded the head of a kitchen-boy. It was thrown into a cellar, and God known how long it remained there. One day, some children found it, and wanted to make use of it to cook some soup of their own making; four of the children died from verdigris poisoning. When I became an attendant, I saw that the cauldron was still in good condition, and that, in spite of its evil reputation, it could render some service. So I adopted it, half out of incredulity regarding its deadly properties, and half out of superstition. I no longer had anything to fear from death, I told myself, and far from dreading it, I desired it. Perhaps the diabolical cauldron would put an end to my suffering.

  “Alas, Monsieur, as you can see, I’m not dead; my hope hasn’t been realized and the fatal influence of the cauldron has no effect on me—unless it’s responsible for the attacks of epilepsy from which I suffer so frequently, and of which I never showed any symptom before my arrival at Bicêtre. But Monsieur, if that malady has a cause, it’s not necessary to accuse that poor piece of copper. Poverty, chagrin and abandonment explain the veritable causes of my suffering too adequately for there to be any need to look for others.”

  At that moment a bell rang; it was the signal for some service for which Jean was responsible. He picked up the cauldron and ran to his post.

  Three or four months went by before I was able to return to Bicêtre. A journey to Flanders had taken me way from Paris for that entire time. On my return, I hastened to go to Bicêtre to shake the hand of my friend Doctor Émile.

  I found him in the dissection room, with a cigar in his mouth and a scalpel in his hand, occupied in searching a cadaver for the characteristic signs of cholera, the first symptoms of which had just declared themselves at Bicêtre. He interrupted his lugubrious work to shake my hand; then, indicating the poor object on the marble table, he said: “This poor devil suffered a great deal; the cholera has not inflicted more frightful and crueler dolors on any of its victims.” He continued, like a true physician: “There’s one curious observation to make; perhaps it’s necessary to seek its cause in the subject’s epileptic condition.”

  Turning back to the unfortunate individual who furnished that scientific observation, he continued: “Poor Père Jean—and to think that the man played a brilliant role in the social order, than en entire audience rose to its feet to salute the name of the poet whose play, full of grace and intelligence it had just admired. To think that those hands, so often occupied in the humblest employments, once disposed of the destiny of a king. Napoléon honored that head with his hatred; at the height of his power he remembered the name of that old man in order to pursue him with his vengeance.”

  “What was that name, then?” I exclaimed.

  “Jean Baudrais.”

  “Jean Baudrais!” I repeated.

  “Yes,” said Émile. “Yes, events pass so quickly in Paris that those who have been involved in them are soon forgotten, no matter how brightly they shone. Listen, then, and I’ll tell you what one of the employees of my establishment told me a little while ago—for like you, I had no idea, until two hours ago that this man was Jean Baudrais.

  “In 1769, there was a charming and intelligent young man in Paris, recently married to a young woman of sixteen, whom he loved passionately, and whose grace equaled her angelic sweetness. When that couple, as remarkable for their youth as for their beauty, were seen in public people pointed to them in admiration, and more than once they found themselves surrounded by a crowd; no one at court or in the city was talking about anything but the two beautiful Tourangeaux. Marie-Antoinette wanted to see them, and had them introduced to her; she thanked Jean Baudrais, in the most affable terms, for delightful comedy entitled L’Allégresse villageoise, which he had composed to celebrate the dauphin’s birth, and did not dismiss them until she had taken off a diamond necklace, which she asked Madame Baudrais to accept.

  “Not so many years later, Jean Baudrais was at the Temple. He presided over a dozen municipal functions there. It was the twenty-fourth of January. Having become a member of the commune, he had acquired a measure of popularity by the violence of his demagogic declamations, and no one more worthy that he had been found to supervise the preparations for the frightful drama that was about to take place. Jean Baudrais therefore received from the hand of King Louis XVI that prince’s testament, and he countersigned it before handing it to the commune; thus, the name of this poor wretch, who will be thrown into the common grave of a hospital, is attached to one of those eternal monuments of which fearful history can only count two or three examples.

  “It was Baudrais, again, who sent the twenty-five louis d’or found in Louis XVI’s writing desk to the public treasury. In 1817 a lawsuit was brought against Baudrais by the heirs of Monsieur de Malesherbes, who claimed that sum. He demonstrated by means of irrefutable proofs that it had been handed to the secretarial clerk.

  After the king’s death, Baudrais, doubtless in recompense for the said functions that he had fulfilled at the Temple, became one of the administrators charged with the supervision of the police. He was denounced in that epoch for being ‘too easy’ on pretty female petitioners. The truth is that Baudrais always showed compassion to the numerous victims of the Terror; that more than one person owed their liberty to him, and that he often, to his credit, saved victims from the scaffold.

  “That benevolence was assessed as weakness and lack of patriotic fervor. Robespierre rendered him destitute and had him thrown in prison. Preparations were being made for his transfer to the Conciergerie and submission to judgment when Robespierre as overthrown and send to the scaffold himself.

  “Baudrais was set free, but, although he had nearly perished under the blows of the power that had just collapsed, he was nevertheless set aside. He accepted the obscurity to which he was condemned without overmuch chagrin and fulfilled for some time the humble functions of a justice of the peace in the Cornmarket district. Anxiety was generated nevertheless by his presence in Paris, and he was ordered to embark for Guadeloupe with the title of civil, criminal and appeal judge in commercial matters. He obeyed, resignedly, embarked and arrived at his post in 1797.

  “Three years later, although he had not left the island and was uninvolved with any political movement, he received his destitution and an order to leave immediately for Cayenne. Napoléon, who nourished sentiments of hatred against him for reasons that remain unknown, had taken his revenge, like a true Corsican. On his orders, Baudrais had been included among the one hundred and seventy-three people accused of complicity in the affair of the infernal machine.35

  “In spite of the injustice of that condemnation, it was necessary to obey. Baudrais was deported to Cayenne. He remained there for several years, after which he found a means to escape and flee to the United States. There he lived for thirteen years, working with his hands. He fulfilled the functions of a cashier in a bank. He would have preferred to be employed as a clerk, but his handwriting, remarkably irregular and almost illegible, never permitted him to do so. He therefore spent his days relentlessly tramping the streets of New York, with a heavy bag on his shoulder, taking bonds whose due date had arrived from institution to institution. In the evening, when he returned to is mansard, he worked ardently on the composition of a very mediocre poem, to which he founded great h
opes of fortune and renown.

  “In 1817 he resolved to return to France, of which Napoléon’s fall permitted him to dream, Regnaud de Saint-Jean-d’Angely and Réal,36 exiled in their turn, who had found their old friend in America, clubbed together to give Baudrais the means to carry out this plan, and he arrived in Paris in the early months of 1818. The majority of his former colleagues were in government, and he had recourse to them, but all doors, including those of people who owed their lives to him, remained closed to a firmer member of the commune. Publishers showed their disdain for the poet’s manuscript. That latter disappointment was perhaps even more dolorous than the former.

  “Meanwhile, his resources were exhausted. Poverty had already arrived sand starvation was approaching. Madame Baudrais fell ill and had to go into the hospital. Then all courage abandoned the poor old man. Separated from the woman who, for so many years, had courageously shared his ill fortune, he fell sick himself and was picked up one morning in a Paris street, at the foot of a boundary-marker, where he had fallen down, exhausted by need and fever. The minister of police had him sent to Bicêtre, among the charity cases. You know the rest, my friend. Jean Baudrais resigned himself courageously to fulfill the functions of a humble ward orderly, and did not recoil from any of the repugnant aspects of that employment. He could, at that price, earn a little money, which he could send to his wife, from whom he was separated, and whom he went to see every week at the Salpêtrière, where she had been placed.”

  The doctor extended his hand over the cadaver by way of an oratorical gesture, and added: “This is the denouement of the drama—a hospital amphitheater!”