The Atheist's Mass
by Honore de Balzac
Translated by Clara Bell
This is dedicated to Auguste Borget by his friend De Balzac
Bianchon, a
physician to whom science owes a fine
system of
theoretical physiology, and who, while still young, made himself
a
celebrity in the
medical school of Paris, that central luminary
to which European doctors do
homage, practised
surgery for a long
time before he took up medicine. His earliest studies were guided
by one of the greatest of French
surgeons, the illustrious
Desplein, who flashed across science like a
meteor. By the
consensus even of his enemies, he took with him to the tomb an
incommunicable method. Like all men of
genius, he had no heirs;
he carried everything in him, and carried it away with him. The
glory of a
surgeon is like that of an actor: they live only so
long as they are alive, and their
talent leaves no trace when
they are gone. Actors and
surgeons, like great singers too, like
the executants who by their
performance increase the power of
music tenfold, are all the heroes of a moment.
Desplein is a case in proof of this
resemblance in the destinies
of such
transientgenius. His name,
yesterday so famous, to-day
almost forgotten, will
survive in his special department without
crossing its limits. For must there not be some extraordinary
circumstances to exalt the name of a professor from the history
of Science to the general history of the human race? Had Desplein
that
universal command of knowledge which makes a man the living
word, the great figure of his age? Desplein had a
godlike eye; he
saw into the
sufferer and his
malady by an intuition, natural or
acquired, which enabled him to grasp the diagnostics
peculiar to
the individual, to determine the very time, the hour, the minute
when an operation should be performed, making due
allowance for
atmospheric conditions and
peculiarities of individual
temperament. To proceed thus, hand in hand with nature, had he
then
studied the
constant assimilation by living beings, of the
elements contained in the
atmosphere, or yielded by the earth to
man who absorbs them, deriving from them a particular expression
of life? Did he work it all out by the power of deduction and
analogy, to which we owe the
genius of Cuvier? Be this as it may,
this man was in all the secrets of the human frame; he knew it in
the past and in the future, emphasizing the present.
But did he epitomize all science in his own person as Hippocrates
did and Galen and Aristotle? Did he guide a whole school towards
new worlds? No. Though it is impossible to deny that this
persistent
observer of human
chemistry possessed that antique
science of the Mages, that is to say, knowledge of the elements
in fusion, the causes of life, life antecedent to life, and what
it must be in its incubation or ever it IS, it must be confessed
that,
unfortunately, everything in him was
purely personal.
Isolated during his life by his egoism, that egoism is now
suicidal of his glory. On his tomb there is no proclaiming statue
to repeat to
posterity the mysteries which
genius seeks out at
its own cost.
But perhaps Desplein's
genius was answerable for his beliefs, and
for that reason
mortal. To him the terrestrial
atmosphere was a
generative
envelope; he saw the earth as an egg within its shell;
and not being able to determine whether the egg or the hen first
was, he would not recognize either the cock or the egg. He
believed neither in the antecedent animal nor the surviving
spirit of man. Desplein had no doubts; he was
positive. His bold
and unqualified atheism was like that of many
scientific men, the
best men in the world, but invincible atheists--atheists such as
religious people declare to be impossible. This opinion could
scarcely exist
otherwise in a man who was accustomed from his
youth to dissect the creature above all others--before, during,
and after life; to hunt through all his organs without ever
finding the individual soul, which is
indispensable to religious
theory. When he detected a cerebral centre, a
nervous centre, and
a centre for aerating the blood--the first two so perfectly
complementary that in the latter years of his life he came to a
conviction that the sense of
hearing is not
absolutely necessary
for
hearing, nor the sense of sight for
seeing, and that the
solar plexus could supply their place without any
possibility of
doubt--Desplein, thus
finding two souls in man, confirmed his
atheism by this fact, though it is no evidence against God. This
man died, it is said, in final impenitence, as do,
unfortunately,
many noble
geniuses, whom God may forgive.
The life of this man, great as he was, was marred by many
meannesses, to use the expression employed by his enemies, who
were
anxious to
diminish his glory, but which it would be more
proper to call
apparent contradictions. Envious people and fools,
having no knowledge of the determinations by which superior
spirits are moved, seize at once on
superficial inconsistencies,
to
formulate an
accusation and so to pass
sentence on them. If,
subsequently, the proceedings thus attacked are crowned with
success, showing the correlations of the preliminaries and the
results, a few of the vanguard of calumnies always
survive. In
our day, for
instance, Napoleon was condemned by our
contemporaries when he spread his eagle's wings to
alight in
England: only 1822 could explain 1804 and the flatboats at
Boulogne.
As, in Desplein, his glory and science were invulnerable, his
enemies attacked his odd moods and his
temper,
whereas, in fact,
he was simply characterized by what the English call
eccentricity. Sometimes very handsomely dressed, like Crebillon
the tragical, he would suddenly
affectextremeindifference as to
what he wore; he was sometimes seen in a
carriage, and sometimes
on foot. By turns rough and kind, harsh and covetous on the
surface, but
capable of
offering his whole fortune to his exiled
masters--who did him the honor of accepting it for a few days--no
man ever gave rise to such contradictory judgements. Although to
obtain a black
ribbon, which
physicians ought not to intrigue
for, he was
capable of dropping a prayer-book out of his pocket
at Court, in his heart he mocked at everything; he had a deep
contempt for men, after studying them from above and below, after
detecting their
genuine expression when performing the most
solemn and the meanest acts of their lives.
The qualities of a great man are often federative. If among these
colossal spirits one has more
talent than wit, his wit is still
superior to that of a man of whom it is simply stated that "he is
witty." Genius always presupposes moral
insight. This
insight may
be
applied to a special subject; but he who can see a flower must
be able to see the sun. The man who on
hearing a diplomate he has
saved ask, "How is the Emperor?" could say, "The
courtier is
alive; the man will follow!"--that man is not merely a
surgeon or
a
physician, he is prodigiously witty also. Hence a patient and
diligent student of human nature will admit Desplein's exorbitant
pretensions, and believe--as he himself believed--that he might
have been no less great as a
minister than he was as a
surgeon.
Among the riddles which Desplein's life presents to many of his
contemporaries, we have chosen one of the most interesting,
because the answer is to be found at the end of the narrative,
and will
avenge him for some foolish charges.
Of all the students in Desplein's hospital, Horace Bianchon was
one of those to whom he most warmly attached himself. Before
being a house
surgeon at the Hotel-Dieu, Horace Bianchon had been
a
medical student
lodging in a squalid boarding house in the
Quartier Latin, known as the Maison Vauquer. This poor young man
had felt there the gnawing of that burning
poverty which is a
sort of crucible from which great
talents are to
emerge as pure
and incorruptible as diamonds, which may be subjected to any
shock without being crushed. In the
fierce fire of their
unbridled passions they
acquire the most impeccable
honesty, and
get into the habit of fighting the battles which await
geniuswith the
constant work by which they coerce their cheated
appetites.
Horace was an
upright young fellow, in
capable of tergiversation
on a matter of honor, going to the point without waste of words,
and as ready to
pledge his cloak for a friend as to give him his
time and his night hours. Horace, in short, was one of those