He had an irritating mannerism: a mania for hiding his hands. He scarcely ever let them wander, as we all do, over objects or on tables. He never handled things lying about with that familiar gesture possessed by almost all men. He never left them naked, his long, bony, delicate, slightly feverish hands.
He thrust them into his pockets, or folded his arms and tucked them under his armpits. You would have said he was afraid they would fall against his will to some forbidden task, perform some shameful or absurd action if he left them free and masters of their own movements.
When obliged to use them for the ordinary purposes of existence, he moved them in abrupt jerks, with swift movements of his arm, as though he was not going to let them have time to act by themselves, defy his will, and do some other thing. At table, he would snatch his glass, his fork or his knife so swiftly that one never had time to foresee what he meant to do before it was done.
Now one evening I got the explanation of this amazing malady that preyed on his soul.
From time to time he would come and spend a few days with me in the country, and that evening he seemed unusually agitated!
A storm was rising in the sky, stifling and black, after a day of appalling heat. No breath of air stirred the leaves. A hot, furnace-like vapour blew in our faces: it made us breathe in gasps. I felt ill at ease, agitated, and was anxious to go to bed.
When he saw me rise to go, Jacques Parent seized my arm with a frightened gesture.
“Oh! no; stay a little longer,” he said.
I stared at him in surprise, murmuring:
“This storm is affecting my nerves.”
“Mine too!” he moaned, or rather shrieked. “I beg you to stay; I do not want to be alone.”
He seemed to be quite out of his wits.
“What is the matter with you?” said I; “are you off your head?”
“Yes, sometimes,” he stammered, “in evenings like this, electric evenings. … I … I … I am afraid … afraid of myself … don’t you understand? I am endowed with a faculty … no … a power … no … a force … Well I don’t know what to call it, but I have inside me such an extraordinary magnetic action that I am afraid, yes, afraid of myself, as I said just now!”
And with frantic shudders he hid his quivering hands under the lapels of his coat. I suddenly realised that I too was trembling with a vague, overmastering, horrible fear. I wanted to get away, escape, fly from the sight of him: I did not want to see his wandering eye pass over me, then avert itself, gaze round the ceiling, and seek some dark corner of the room to stare at, as though he wanted to hide his fatal glance too.
“You never told me that before,” I stammered.
“Do I ever tell a soul?” he answered. “But tonight I cannot keep silent, and I would rather you knew all; besides, you might be able to help me.
“Magnetism! Do you know what it is? No. No one knows. But it is known that there is such a thing. It is recognised, doctors practise it, and one of the most famous, M. Charcot, teaches it; so there can be no doubt that it exists.
“A man, a human being, has the power, terrifying and incomprehensible, of putting another human being to sleep by the strength of his will, and, while he is asleep, of stealing his mind as one would steal a purse. He steals his mind, that is to say, his soul, the soul, the sanctuary, the secret of the Ego, the soul, that deepest part of man, once thought impenetrable, the soul, the asylum of thoughts that cannot be confessed, of everything a man hides, everything he loves, everything he would conceal from all human creatures. That sanctuary he opens, violates, displays and flings to the public! Is it not frightful, criminal, infamous?
“Why, and how, is this done? Does anyone know? But what is known?
“It is all a mystery. We only communicate with things by means of our wretched, incomplete, infirm senses, so weak that they scarcely have the power to discover the world around us. It is all a mystery. Think of music, the divine art, the art that stirs the soul to its depths, ravishes, intoxicates it, maddens it. What is it? Nothing.
“You don’t understand? Listen. Two bodies meet. The air vibrates. These vibrations are more or less numerous, more or less rapid, more or less violent, according to the nature of the shock. Now we have in our ears a little membrane that receives these vibrations of the air and transmits them to the brain in the form of sound. Imagine a glass of water turning to wine in your mouth. The drum of the ear accomplishes that incredible metamorphosis, the astounding miracle of turning movement into sound. That’s all.
“Music, that complex and mysterious act, precise as algebra and vague as a dream, an art made of mathematics and the wind, only happens, then, as the result of the properties of a little membrane. If that membrane did not exist, sound would not exist either, since in itself it is merely vibration. Can one imagine music without the ear? No. Well, we are surrounded with things whose existence we never suspect, because we lack the organs that would reveal them to us.
“Magnetism is perhaps one of these. We can but have presentiments of that power, try fearfully to get in touch with these spirits who neighbour us, and catch glimpses of this new secret of nature, because we do not ourselves possess the revealing instrument.
“As for myself. … As for myself, I am endowed with a horrible power. You might think there was another creature imprisoned within me, always longing to escape, to act in defiance of me; it moves, and gnaws at me, and wears me out.
