He passed suddenly from complete depression into boundless hope.  This physician was a celebrated specialist, a doctor renowned for his cures of nervous maladies “He must have cured many more dangerous cases than mine,” Des Esseintes reflected.  “I shall certainly be on my feet in a few days.”  Disenchantment succeeded his confidence.  Learned and intuitive though they be, physicians know absolutely nothing of neurotic diseases, being ignorant of their origins.  Like the others, this one would prescribe the eternal oxyde of zinc and quinine, bromide of potassium and valerian.  He had recourse to another thought:  “If these remedies have availed me little in the past, could it not be due to the fact that I have not taken the right quantities?”

In spite of everything, this expectation of being cured cheered him, but then a new fear entered.  His servant might have failed to find the physician.  Again he grew faint, passing instantly from the most unreasoning hopes to the most baseless fears, exaggerating the chances of a sudden recovery and his apprehensions of danger.  The hours passed and the moment came when, in utter despair and convinced that the physician would not arrive, he angrily told himself that he certainly would have been saved, had he acted sooner.  Then his rage against the servant and the physician whom he accused of permitting him to die, vanished, and he ended by reproaching himself for having waited so long before seeking aid, persuading himself that he would now be wholly cured had he that very last evening used the medicine.

Little by little, these alternations of hope and alarms jostling in his poor head, abated.  The struggles ended by crushing him, and he relapsed into exhausted sleep interrupted by incoherent dreams, a sort of syncope pierced by awakenings in which he was barely conscious of anything.  He had reached such a state where he lost all idea of desires and fears, and he was stupefied, experiencing neither astonishment or joy, when the physician suddenly arrived.

The doctor had doubtless been apprised by the servant of Des Esseintes’ mode of living and of the various symptoms observed since the day when the master of the house had been found near the window, overwhelmed by the violence of perfumes.  He put very few questions to the patient whom he had known for many years.  He felt his pulse and attentively studied the urine where certain white spots revealed one of the determining causes of nervousness.  He wrote a prescription and left without saying more than that he would soon return.

This visit comforted Des Esseintes who none the less was frightened by the taciturnity observed; he adjured his servant not to conceal the truth from him any longer.  But the servant declared that the doctor had exhibited no uneasiness, and despite his suspicions, Des Esseintes could seize upon no sign that might betray a shadow of a lie on the tranquil countenance of the old man.