Godefroid and Monsieur Bernard made an involuntary pause, and looked at each other.

“Marriage, as you know, sometimes changes a young woman greatly,” resumed the old man.  “The first pregnancy passed well and produced a son, my grandson, who now lives with us, the last scion of two families.  The second pregnancy was accompanied by such extraordinary symptoms that the physicians, much astonished, attributed them to the caprice of phenomena which sometimes manifest themselves in this state, and are recorded by physicians in the annals of science.  My daughter gave birth to a dead child; in fact, it was twisted and smothered by internal movements.  The disease had begun, the pregnancy counted for nothing.  Perhaps you are a student of medicine?”

Godefroid made a sign which answered as well for affirmation as for negation.

“After this terrible confinement,” resumed Monsieur Bernard,—­“so terrible and laborious that it made a violent impression on my son-in-law and began the mortal melancholy of which he died,—­my daughter, two or three months later, complained of a general weakness affecting, particularly, her feet, which she declared felt like cottonwood.  This debility changed to paralysis,—­and what a paralysis!  My daughter’s feet and legs can be bent or twisted in any way and she does not feel it.  The limbs are there, apparently without blood or muscles or bones.  This affection, which is not connected with anything known to science, spread to the arms and hands, and we then supposed it to be a disease of the spinal cord.  Doctors and remedies only made matters worse until at last my poor daughter could not be moved without dislocating either the shoulders, the arms, or the knees.  I kept an admirable surgeon almost constantly in the house, who, with the doctor, or doctors (for many came out of interest in the case), replaced the dislocated limbs,—­sometimes, would you believe it monsieur? three and four times a day!  Ah!—­This disease has so many forms that I forgot to tell you that during the first period of weakness, before the paralysis began, the strangest signs of catalepsy appeared—­you know what catalepsy is.  She remained for days with her eyes wide open, motionless, in whatever position she was when the attack seized her.  The worst symptoms of that strange affection were shown, even those of lockjaw.  This phase of her illness suggested to me the idea of employing magnetism, and I was about to do so when the paralysis began.  My daughter, monsieur, has a miraculous clear-sightedness; her soul has been the theatre of all the wonders of somnambulism, just as her body has been that of all diseases.”

Godefroid began to ask himself if the old man were really sane.