Summary

In the final section of this book, Barnes writes that Pozzi’s family life unraveled in 1909, when Thérèse Pozzi, his wife, separated from him. He became the target of gossip as well as denunciation by some “anti-Dreyfusard, anti-Semitic, royalist, nativist, Catholic” right-wing society members. Yet, simultaneously, he found peace with Emma Fischoff, he witnessed medical advances in the removal of ovaries, and he met the famed Dr. Carrell of the United States, from whom he learned more techniques he would bring home to France. In 1910, he travelled to Argentina and Brazil and was astounded by the kindness with which mental institutions treated their patients. Tragically, his own youngest son, Jacques, would be institutionalized in France several times since he suffered from mental disabilities but would unfortunately never be treated with kindness and almost always with cruelty. Unrelatedly, a battle was raging...