CHAPTER XVI.
MESMER AND ST. MARTIN.
The fashionable study in Paris at this time, and that which engrossedmost of those who had no business to attend to, was Mesmerism--amysterious science, badly defined by its discoverers, who did not wishto render it too plain to the eyes of the people. Dr. Mesmer, who hadgiven to it his own name, was then in Paris, as we have already heardfrom Marie Antoinette.
This Doctor Mesmer deserves a few words from us, as his name was then inall mouths.
He had brought this science from Germany, the land of mysteries, in1777. He had previously made his debut there, by a theory on theinfluence of the planets. He had endeavored to establish that thesecelestial bodies, through the same power by which they attract eachother, exercised an influence over living bodies, and particularly overthe nervous system, by means of a subtle fluid with which the air isimpregnated. But this first theory was too abstract: one must, tounderstand it, be initiated into all the sciences of Galileo or Newton;and it would have been necessary, for this to have become popular, thatthe nobility should have been transformed into a body of savants. Hetherefore abandoned this system, and took up that of the loadstone,which was then attracting great attention, people fancying that thiswonderful power was efficacious in curing illnesses.
Unhappily for him, however, he found a rival in this already establishedin Vienna; therefore he once more announced that he abandoned mineralmagnetism, and intended to effect his cures through animal magnetism.
This, although a new name, was not in reality a new science; it was asold as the Greeks and Egyptians, and had been preserved in traditions,and revived every now and then by the sorcerers of the thirteenth,fourteenth, and fifteenth centuries, many of whom had paid for theirknowledge with their lives. Urbain Grandier was nothing but an animalmagnetizer; and Joseph Balsamo we have seen practising it. Mesmer onlycondensed this knowledge into a science, and gave it a name. He thencommunicated his system to the scientific academies of Paris, London,and Berlin. The two first did not answer him, and the third said that hewas mad. He came to France, and took out of the hands of Dr. Storck, andof the oculist Wenzel, a young girl seventeen years old, who had acomplaint of the liver and gutta serena, and after three months of histreatment, restored her health and her sight.
This cure convinced many people, and among them a doctor called Deslon,who, from his enemy, became his pupil. Prom this time his reputationgradually increased; the academy declared itself against him, but thecourt for him. At last the government offered him, in the king's name,an income for life of twenty thousand francs to give lectures in public,and ten thousand more to instruct three persons, who should be chosen bythem, in his system.
Mesmer, however, indignant at the royal parsimony, refused, and set outfor the Spa waters with one of his patients; but while he was gone,Deslon, his pupil, possessor of the secret which he had refused to sellfor thirty thousand francs a year, opened a public establishment for thetreatment of patients. Mesmer was furious, and exhausted himself incomplaints and menaces. One of his patients, however, M. de Bergasse,conceived the idea of forming a company. They raised a capital of340,000 francs, on the condition that the secret should be revealed tothe shareholders. It was a fortunate time: the people, having no greatpublic events to interest them, entered eagerly into every new amusementand occupation; and this mysterious theory possessed no littleattraction, professing, as it did, to cure invalids, restore mind to thefools, and amuse the wise.
Everywhere Mesmer was talked of. What had he done? On whom had heperformed these miracles? To what great lord had he restored sight? Towhat lady worn out with dissipation had he renovated the nerves? To whatyoung girl had he shown the future in a magnetic trance? The future!that word of ever-entrancing interest and curiosity.
Voltaire was dead; there was no one left to make France laugh, exceptperhaps Beaumarchais, who was still more bitter than his master;Rousseau was dead, and with him the sect of religious philosophers. Warhad generally occupied strongly the minds of the French people, but nowthe only war in which they were engaged was in America, where the peoplefought for what they called independence, and what the French calledliberty; and even this distant war in another land, and affectinganother people, was on the point of termination. Therefore they feltmore interest just now in M. Mesmer, who was near, than in Washington orLord Cornwallis, who were so far off. Mesmer's only rival in the publicinterest was St. Martin, the professor of spiritualism, as Mesmer was ofmaterialism, and who professed to cure souls, as he did bodies.
Imagine an atheist with a religion more attractive than religion itself;a republican full of politeness and interest for kings; a gentleman ofthe privileged classes tender and solicitous for the people, endowedwith the most startling eloquence, attacking all the received religionsof the earth.
Imagine Epicurus in white powder, embroidered coat, and silk stockings,not content with endeavoring to overturn a religion in which he did notbelieve, but also attacking all existing governments, and promulgatingthe theory that all men are equal, or, to use his own words, that allintelligent beings are kings.
Imagine the effect of all this in society as it then was, without fixedprinciples or steady guides, and how it was all assisting to light thefire with which France not long after began to consume herself.