Which is my husband?

Front matter

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Dedication

Would you like romances of a new kind, my dear Madame? Wonderful romances, in which the truest incidents appear the most improbable? Open the books in which the scientists relate what goes on in the human brain.

A sound mind or heart must be in a sound body. The most astonishing journey, the one that surpasses in discoveries all the volumes of the explorers and the works of the inventors of aeroplanes, is the journey around the human body. And you may be sure that all the incredible things which people tell you about human beings with two personalities, and about the wonderful discoveries concerning the third eye which is lacking in the modem man, are scientifically true. Science is in pursuit of the impossible. It will attain it.

Meanwhile, Romance sees, foresees, announces, prophesies. And it is the right of Romance to divine and foretell the future, especially when its divinations or its researches rest upon facts.

Part First Page

II. — Two Lives in One 11

III. — The Marriage of Andk£ Fortis 35

IV. — The Attack Returns 47

V. — Is it Insanity? 60

VI. — The Awakening 69

VII. — The Duty of C^cile Fortis 82

VIII. — A Scientific Interview 96

IX. — The Malady Returns 117

X. — The Game of Cards 128

XI. — The Madman 139

XII. — An Affair of Honor 149

XIII. — After the Attack 154

XIV. — Two Unexpected Visitors 165

XV. — The Two “Manners” of Andr£ Fortis . . .181

PART SECOND I. — The Laboratory 191

II. — Dead Eyes 198

III. — Unknown Things 204

vii

CONTENTS

PAGE

IV. — The Light of Hope 213

V. — The Unconscious Self 217

VI.— The Third Eye 226

VII. — Malebranche’s Leg of Mutton 242

VIII. — The Other’s Masterpiece 247

IX. — To Kill The Other 260

X. — The Death-Struggle of Andr£ David . . . 269

XI. — Experiments 277

XII. — The Recovery 283

XIII. — Mortuary Letter 293

XIV. — The Grain of Sand 309

XV. — Disappearance 317

XVI. — The Statue of the Living Dead 323

XVII. — The Apotheosis 331

XVIII. — And Life Goes On 349

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

FACING

PAGE

"‘Why, yes, I have every right,’ he said, raising the palette knife” Frontispiece

“He apologized for this revelation . . . which, to

C6cile, was something incredible, sinister, mad” . . 64

“‘Is it thou!”’ 86

“Andr6’s thin hand passed over his brow with the familiar

gesture” 122

“He beheld as if they were apparitions the bronze Tritons

in the empty basins” 146

“These two strangers were the seconds of some unknown

adversary” 168

“The little man’s terrible black eyes sought in the dusk for

Fortis” 204

“Dr. Chardin and his former patient were talking of the

man whose bust had just been inaugurated” . . . 348

Part First I

Several patients, who had come at the consultation hour, were waiting in Dr. Chardin’s large parlor on the Boulevard Haussmann. Buried in armchairs, impatient, sullen, or timid, they maintained the bored silence of prisoners brought to a judge’s anteroom. Two sad-looking old ladies had brought a wan little boy whom they scolded gently when he coughed. A pretty young woman, evidently nervous, feverishly turned over the leaves of magazines and illustrated books lying on the table. There was a fat man with a puffy, apoplectic face, and, in one corner, with his legs crossed and his hat on his knees, a thin young man, of fashionable and refined appearance, whose eyes roved from the paintings on the wall to the trees in the street, whose yellow leaves and half-stripped branches could be seen through the windows.

Occasionally the door from the parlor into the doctor’s office opened, and a tall, thin man in a black frock coat appeared on the threshold. A pointed 3

WHICH IS MY HUSBAND?

head was seen above a lean, full-shaven face; the tall, slender body made a beckoning gesture, mechanical as the movement of a semaphore, one of the patients rose and disappeared into the doctor’s office, and the door closed noiselessly upon some confidence or affliction.

The young man, who was the last comer, was thinking that this long waiting in the doctor’s parlor resembled other halting places of misery in our daily lives. The eyes of the patients rested with a sort of jealous anger on the others who were to enter before them. One would have said that those whom the doctor summoned were the spoiled children of fate, who were taking time and life from the others. The young woman restlessly opened and shut again the bindings of the well-thumbed books, which had been handled by many fingers, while the tips of her little feet beat a tune upon the carpet.

“What’s the use of being in a hurry?” said a neighbor to the young man. “Everybody gets there in his turn.”

Yet this philosopher, a middle-aged army officer, had but one idea, to avoid leaning back in the armchair in which he sat, in order to escape contact with its back. He sat very erect on the edge, regarding with a sort of pity those who let their heads touch against their chairs. When his hand grazed the arm 4 he quickly wiped it. “They don’t know,” he said to himself. “They might catch the disease that makes you bald. Ah, disease is everywhere. You may say indeed that the microbes watch us. A speck of dust inhaled is perhaps the entrance of death.” And he kept repeating, “Why hurry? One always arrives.”

The doctor’s waiting-room gradually became empty. The two ladies in mourning had taken in the little child, the apoplectic man had rushed towards the door, and — after the one who had worried about microbes — the stylish and charming young woman, drawing her fur stole gracefully around her shoulders, had entered the office, smiling and brave, as if she were going to meet her sweetheart. The young man, left alone before the canvases which had such an attraction for him, moving from a Diaz to a Ziem, awaited his turn; while the servant, opening the door which led into the room, occasionally introduced new patients, who took the places of those who had gone in before.

Dr. Chardin’s office hours were always crowded. This bold innovator was already as famous abroad as in Paris, and was perhaps even more appreciated in America and in Russia for his works on nervous diseases and the life of the brain. But he was not content with this specialty, wide and far-reaching though it was. He followed up at the same time 5

WHICH IS MY HUSBAND?

active researches in the most different directions, proceeding on the belief that only the big ideas and principles matter, and that the man of to-day ought to know everything and try to define everything about the entire universe. People told wonderful tales of Dr. Chardin, as of a sort of legendary being — tales of unhoped-for cures, made without noise or announcement in the papers. He had discovered the marvels of liquid air; he had penetrated the secrets of the human body with rays of light almost at the same time as Roentgen; he had perfected Firsen’s apparatus for curing lupus by light, finding recovery in the famous red room where other rays devoured and carried off skin diseases. The scientific world was deeply interested in Chardin’s researches into the curative properties of Curie’s radium. But the doctor, who did not belong to any school, admitted no visitor or witness into his laboratory at Montrouge, avoiding reporters as other people sought them.

While the young man was watching the passers-by, the parlor filled again with new patients. The office door opened, the doctor’s bald head appeared, the long, thin arm made a beckoning gesture, and the young man entered.

Before an immense desk covered with papers and books, with Japanese bronze crabs for paper weights, 6

Dr. Chardin, whose pale, impassive face, with its big features, suggested a head carved from the meat of an immense nut, rested his elbows on the blotting pad, while his gaze bored to the inmost soul of the man before him. His gray eye, keen and sharp as a needle, became uncomfortable for the man who was enduring his glance. It was a sort of human ray as penetrating as a cathode one. The young man, whose dark eyes lighted up a wan face framed by a black beard, examined with anxious curiosity this man whose look searched and explored his mind like a probe.

“Well, sir, will you kindly explain to me your condition as briefly as possible? The trouble is evidently some nervous ailment.’ ’

The patient was a tall, well-made, fine-looking fellow, who did not look in the least like an invalid, and it needed the doctor’s trained eye to perceive the invisible defect.

“Yes, Doctor,” said he, a little disconcerted, “and a very unusual one. But you have a great many people in your waiting-room, and I fear that my story will be long. On the other hand, you will see presently that I cannot defer my visit, and that you cannot put off your decision to another day. I will ask you to be so kind as to hear me with patience. The others — ”

WHICH IS MY HUSBAND?

4 ‘You have come in your turn, sir. The others will wait for theirs. What is the matter with you ? ’ ’

“As I have told you, Doctor, it is a very strange trouble. Anyone except you would take me for a lunatic, and would learnedly demonstrate my insanity. I am ill, undoubtedly; but — you may subject me to all the tests you like — I am not a madman. You will tell me that all lunatics assert that their minds are perfectly sound. I do not say that in regard to myself, please observe. On the contrary, there is a lesion in me. I have come to put my case before you, not asking you to cure me instantly, but first to advise and afterwards to cure me.”

“I am listening,” said Dr. Chardin, whose gray eyes never left the dark ones of the speaker.

“First of all, Doctor, you should know who I am. Here is my card.”

“Andre Fortis. The artist?”

“The artist.”

The doctor smiled — and the coming of the unexpected smile on his frigid face was charming. Then he added a rapid, graphic, and just comment upon the beautiful, mournful landscapes exhibited by Fortis at the last Salon, and went on gently:

“Your canvases certainly proceed from a vision that knows how to seize, and an art which knows how to express. You are a poet; but, judging by 8 your work, your brain is perfectly formed. I won’t say as much for all your brethren. Let us proceed. ’ ’

“Doctor,” said Andre, smiling in response, “since your preliminary impression is so favorable, it puts me more at ease in making a confession, which, I hope, in spite of its singularity, will not change your diagnosis. I have told you that I am not mad. But my morbid condition renders me as unfortunate as if I were. I am a being whose personality at certain hours, and for a considerable length of time, is doubled. ’ ’

“You mean — ?”

“I mean that suddenly, at the moment I am least expecting it, while walking, talking, working, in the studio, or at table, a longing for sleep seizes upon me; I fall into a slumber without any cause, and I then become — you are not going to believe me — yes, I become a different man, a totally different man, a man whose life is unlike the first one’s, who has his own opinions, his own ideas, his own thoughts — which are not mine — a man who exists within me and who cuts into my usual life to begin and continue another existence, suddenly, unexpectedly, almost destructively. So in this second life, which gives me in reality a second consciousness, I am entirely unlike my usual self, and living necessarily with the same people, keeping the same body, the same voice, the 9

WHICH IS MY HUSBAND?

same movements, I must evidently appear to them incomprehensible and abnormal, since this double life transforms me into two persons contained in a single man. Bear in mind, Doctor, that I should never even have been able to understand my condition, since I remember my second life only when the sleep surprises me, if an old family friend who died six months ago, Dr. Burke — ”

“I knew him. He was an excellent man.”

“If Dr. Burke had not explained what took place within me, and how a sudden sleep might throw me into another existence utterly different from my own, leaving me to return to the first one without even having, I repeat, any recollection of what I have done, said, or thought during the second state — Isn’t second state what you call that sort of incredible somnambulism which takes possession of me and, for a certain time, makes me no longer myself? I am He, a being whom I do not know, who is not I, but The Other?”

II

The physician kept his eyes fixed on the young man, and seemed to be studying his gestures, the tone of his voice, and the varying expression of his face, which, just now quite composed, seemed gradually to grow anxious, and then wrathful, as if a third person had introduced himself between these two men, and Fortis, divining the intrusion, was irritated by it.

“I am convinced, Doctor, that you believe me perfectly insane.”

“No,” said the physician; “but you are ill, and you have just described a very extraordinary case.”

“Unique,” said the artist, vehemently, “yes, unique.”

Dr. Chardin shook his head, smiling.

“That’s an instance of human vanity. It is found even among the sick. Especially among the sick. Nothing in Nature is unique, sir. Everything has a precedent. Science knows few, and has noted and studied only five or six cases identical or comparable 11

WHICH IS MY HUSBAND?

with yours; but this matter of the double consciousness and the dividing of the personality is well known, even classic. I regret to deprive you of an illusion, but you have had predecessors. One famous case which was observed and reported is in all the works on physiology and psychology, the story of Felida.”

“Felida?”

“You do not know it? If you open a book about hypnotism — and I advise you not to do so in your present nervous condition — you will find related at length, repeated, examined, the story of the young woman in Bordeaux who lived two existences in one. She had a husband and children, and lived a double life. She was sad while she led one of her two lives, gay when she returned to the other, to the amazement of the scientists who had her under observation. A charming, highly learned man, a Professor in the Faculty of Medicine of Bordeaux, whom I can still see on one of his visits to La Salpetriere, slight, thoughtful, modest, conversing well, listening still better — Doctor Azam, who has studied deeply into hypnotism — has signed his name to this extraordinary observation of Felida. Felida was a hysterical person. Don’t take the word in the meaning commonly given. You are nervous, and nervousness is the hysteria of men. If the phenomena which you describe to me are correct — your precision indicates 12 that they are — yon are a masculine Felida. How old are you?”

“Twenty-nine.”

* 1 Have you any relative of eccentric character among your ancestors? Think carefully.”

“Not one,” replied the artist.

“At what age did your father die?”

“Sixty-four. He was a robust man. A cold caught in coming out of the theater carried him off . ’ ’

“Your mother?”

“My mother died young. I scarcely knew her. A smiling face, a crayon portrait by Chaplin, are all that is left me of her.”

“And is there nothing in the family traditions that recalls to you any unusual person ? ’ ’

“Nothing.”

“Yet there must be some ancestor to whom you owe this neurosis. In us always lives or relives some unknown ancestor who reappears and imposes upon us his defects or bestows his genius. Did you have any shock, or fright, during your childhood?”

“None,” the young man replied.

“Search your memory well.”

“It is useless to try to remember, Doctor. I evoke nothing, I recall nothing. ’ 9

“Well, causes do not remove effects. And it is the effects which must be combated.”

WHICH IS MY HUSBAND?

Andre Fortis looked the physician steadily in the face, then, after seeming to hesitate a moment:

* ‘ Combated, agreed. But, ’ ’ he said slowly , 4 ‘ cured ? Can there be a cure?”

‘ 4 There can always be a cure,” said Dr. Chardin, positively.

“But Felida? That Felida whom Dr. — ”

“Azam!”

“But Felida? Has she been cured?”

“She has lived, I tell you. She has been a wife, a mother, and perhaps is living still.”

“Cured?” Andre repeated, emphasizing the word.

“People can always be ill again,” answered the physician, in the same firm tone in which he had spoken of the cure.

An abrupt gesture from the young man accented the reply.

“I have not the right to be ill again, Doctor.”

“Why?”

“Ah! why? why? I am to be married to-morrow. That’s the trouble.”

There was an expression of such wild excitement in the artist’s eyes, that the physician, until now observing a neuropathic patient, wondered if he might not be in the presence of a lunatic. But with singular precision, as if he were answering the doctor’s 14 mute anxiety, nay, his very thought, the young man hastened to repeat:

"Once more, do not think me wholly mad. Troubled, yes; alarmed, yes; apparently forced toward an abyss, striving to draw back, and unable to do so, yes. This is why I have come to consult you, to confess, in a fashion, as I have told you. As to having my full reason, I possess it entirely; I am really I; and besides, for a long time, I have reconquered this personality, and that is what has enabled me to begin, without remorse, the love romance which will end, or which should end, to-morrow by a marriage. I worship the young girl who will be my wife. She loves me. I have an independent fortune, and my brush would make me almost rich, if I were harassed by the necessity for working. We have every chance of happiness before us, but on one condition, that this dividing of my personality does not render impossible, absolutely impossible, the new existence which I am going to create, and which will be my salvation. In short, if this other Ego who is not I — really, Doctor, it seems as if I were talking like Sosia in Moliere’s “Amphitryon” — does not throw himself across my life, my joys, my fireside, and change into a hell what ought to be for me the most delightful, the most ardently desired refuge.”

WHICH IS MY HUSBAND?

Andre stopped, anxiously questioning Dr. Chardin’s keen eyes. He was like a man awaiting the sentence of a judge.

Before pronouncing it, the physician asked farther questions :

“In what way does this second state into which you enter begin? Is there any indication or sensation — what we term the aura — that warns you of its approach ? ’ ’

“Yes. Didn’t I tell you? Generally a sort of lightning flash, a luminous and persistent zigzag line, passes before my eyes; objects appear either striped with light or encircled like an aureole, a halo — or else there is a sudden drowsiness, an invincible desire to sleep, a heaviness of brain which is not disagreeable, no, on the contrary, pleasant, attractive, as though something sweet and happy was buried in the darkness. Then I emerge from this vague half slumber or these dazzling lights to find myself again, to awaken, no doubt, in this second state and become the other person, to put on, if I can express myself in that way, the livery and the ideas of another, to be The Other, and to continue, in this state, the new existence which has nothing in common with the former one. But I have already told you this. I beg your pardon, it is the obsession.”

“ Is it a considerable time since you have been in this second state ?”

‘‘Yes, Doctor, yes. Two years. And Dr. Burke even assured me that I was cured.”

“He was right. In such a case the suggestion is very powerful. Besides, Burke might perfectly well tell the truth. It is very possible that you are cured — very possible/ ’

A ray of light flashed into Andre Fortis’s eyes, which were riveted upon the physician’s.

“Then, Doctor, this marriage? This marriage is to take place to-morrow — ”

“Well?” said Chardin coldly.

“There is no objection to it? I have no reason to fear that a sort of phantom will interpose between me and my happiness, take my place, and expel me in a way from my own existence ? ’ ’

“I must above all tell you, and repeat to you, sir, that what you fear is not possible. You must be penetrated, saturated with this belief. You must drive away all anxiety. You must persuade yourself that you have been dreaming, and that the nightmare is gone. You understand, persuade yourself thoroughly, absolutely. You come to consult me at a peried in your life when it is difficult to draw back. It is to-morrow — you said to-morrow?”

WHICH IS MY HUSBAND?

•‘To-morrow at eleven o’clock at the office in the second ward. At noon at Saint-Roch.”

The doctor remained thoughtful, pondering, hesitating, biting his lips. He had divined the grief of this soul in distress, the bewilderment of this spirit. He felt that he was confronting an inscrutable mystery.

Master of a human destiny, he had the power over life and death. One word, one single word would become a sentence.

“To-morrow?” he said. “And this young girl loves you?”

“Deeply, I am sure of it, as I love her myself.”

Then the physician slowly pronounced the words:

‘ £ Good Heavens, sir, if you had come to consult me two months ago, I should have advised you to reflect, I should have placed you under observation, and my opinion would soon have been definite. But you come at the hour when the happiness and also the reputation of a young girl are at stake, to question me, while stating that your own physician, who has studied and cared for you, pronounced you cured. You embarrass me. Were you engaged when Dr. Burke died?”

“Did he have your confidence when your love for the young girl whom you are to marry began?”

“ Yes, Doctor. And as I expressed my grief, a very natural anguish, I have told you that he reassured me. A regular life, a deep affection, a profession that I love — he firmly believed that I could brave the future, and that the past, the detestable past, was in truth the past.”

“I wish it may be so,” said Dr. Chardin.

Then, seeing that Andre Fortis had turned slightly pale, he added very quickly :

“And I believe it, since he said so. Dr. Burke was no ordinary physician.”

4 4 Then ? ’ ’ asked the artist, whose voice choked as he put the question.

4 4 Then between the certain scandal, from which some irreparable misfortune may spring — ”

4 4 That is also certain, Doctor. Yes, if you tell me not to marry to-morrow, I shall return home, write my farewell letter, and kill myself.”

4 4 That would be an absurdity,” said the physician. 4 4 But it is the follies which are always most eagerly committed in life. I was saying to you that between a misfortune — and this folly would be one which might perhaps open the door to many others — between a misfortune and a risk, or, what is better, a hope, the least tragical solution should be chosen. You will give me your address. Whatever may happen, you will return to see me, and you will be able, 19

WHICH IS MY HUSBAND?

if necessary, to jot down on paper for me — for me alone, of course — your sensations, your anxieties, if you have any, if you foresee the awakening of that Other , as you call him. If he reappears in your life, which I do not believe — you hear, look at me — ” and the doctor plunged his gaze like a bistoury into the young man’s eyes — “which I do not believe” — he emphasized the words imperatively, dictated them like an order — “which I do not believe, you will hasten at once to inform me ! And we shall be masters of the situation ! ’ ’

“Really?” said Andre Fortis, as if the words were a cry of deliverance.

“Really!” said Dr. Chardin firmly.

“Ah! Doctor, Doctor, Doctor! You are saving my life!”

“I am convinced of it. You are capable of having already loaded your revolver.”

The artist burst into a little nervous laugh and, as if startled — not by his act, but by having it thus correctly divined — said:

“Yes, it is true! What can you expect? I worship my fiancee. To lose her seems impossible. I cannot resign myself to it. What is a bit of lead in the brain?”

“Be certain that that is not a remedy,” said Dr. Chardin.

He had risen, holding out his hand to the young man :

4 £ Come ! And have confidence ! * ’

“And thank you, Doctor!”

Then as Fortis made a movement to place the physician’s fee on a comer of the desk, Dr. Chardin stopped him:

“No, no. Later. The point in question here is a cure. We will arrange that when I tell you it is accomplished. And it is you, yes, you, at the proper hour, who will tell me so.”

“Ah! Doctor!” cried the young man, “ there is someone worthy of higher admiration than the artist who sells the illusion of color and scenes; it is the man of science who bestows happiness.”

“Well, then,” said the physician, “I will retain the title, dealer in happiness. Come, I wish you happiness, Monsieur Fortis. And say to yourself: ‘I am happy,’ as you will repeat: ‘I am cured.’ To believe ourselves what we wish to be is perhaps the only certain way of having what we desire.”

Andre Fortis ran lightly down the doctor’s steps, and made his heels ring merrily on the pavement. He walked erect, his head held high, inhaling deep draughts of air. Life seemed brighter, or rather became possible. The dry leaves that had fallen from the plane trees whirled rapidly before him, like mes- 21

WHICH IS MY HUSBAND?

sengers of joy. At the edge of the horizon, amid the pearl gray tint of November, there were bits of blue sky, the tender blue of Correggio, which opened like women’s eyes. Sunshine appeared, then vanished, glowing on the slate roofs and the tall white houses. The air was very mild and spring-like, one of those periods in the melancholy summer of Saint- Martin, when landscapes and persons possess the enjoyment, though already impaired, of things which are about to die.

To Andre Fortis, on the contrary, it was a joy just beginning. Two hours before, he had anxiously entered the elevator which was to convey him to Dr. Chardin’s apartment; now, the consultation over, he descended, treading with the steps of a victorious conqueror or a liberated prisoner.

Life seemed to him beautiful, the passers-by appeared joyous. Shakespeare standing on his pedestal — Shakespeare, the poet of deep passions and woeful follies — seemed to say: “Cast far from you the Doubt that kills, repeat to yourself the opposite of Hamlet’s words: Hope and live!”

Live? The artist only asked to live. The blood of youth was throbbing hotly in his veins. The visions of Art gave him beautiful dreams. Landscapes were to him like living poetry, which he fixed upon canvas with the joy of a creator; springs smil- 22 ing with all their whiteness, or the tears of autumn with their showers of golden leaves. What! He had a future of glory before him, and suddenly, gliding into his personality like a thief in the night, another, The Other , would come to snatch from him all his dreams, substitute new thoughts for his own ideas, stop the life which was opening triumphantly, happily. A stranger slipped within him and became himself. Andre put on like a costume a new personality, and in this costume felt stifled, bewildered, as if cased in a suit of iron armor, too tight and too heavy to wear.

Dr. Chardin had just told him that the intruder’s yoke could be shaken off, this moral armor, as weighty as the instruments of torture in which patients were enclosed in former days, could be broken! The physician, in a word, had restored to the despairing man that excuse for living — hope! Andre Fortis, in a joyous mood, was mentally thanking the sky, the trees, the leaves, the entire framework of his happiness, associating them with this intoxication of the escaped convict.

Yes, if Chardin’s verdict had been different, he had resolved to die. Rather than write to Mademoiselle de Jandrieu that he renounced, for unaccountable reasons, the honor and joy of marrying her, he would have lodged a bullet in his head. This was not the 3 23