"Protestations of love!" he
whispered, smiling and folding them up. "Protestations of love--that
is to say, falsehoods. But I must confess that this arrow, which mes
chers amis mes ennemis have discharged at me, is at least very
finely feathered and very attractive. At eight o'clock in the
morning, then! Well, I shall see whether I do not succeed in playing
my hostile friends a little trick, and in returning the arrow to
their own breast."
CHAPTER XVII.
THE CLAIRVOYANTE.
For some time past the inhabitants of Berlin had paid a great deal
of attention to the doings of Doctor Binder, and told each other
wonderful stories of the new medical system of this strange
physician. He treated his patients in an entirely novel way, and
performed his cures in a manner bordering strongly on the romantic
and miraculous. He neither felt the pulse of his sick friends, nor
did he examine their tongue; he only gazed on them for a minute with
his sombre, flaming eyes, and the patients then felt as if
fascinated by them. Their pain ceased, their blood burned less
ardently, and an indescribable feeling pervaded their body for a
moment. When the doctor perceived this, he would raise both his
hands, and with the palms softly and repeatedly stroke his subject's
face. Then the sufferer's cheeks colored; a wondrous, long-forgotten
smile played round the lips which, for many months, had opened only
to utter prayers, or sighs and complaints; the dimmed eyes began to
brighten, and fixed themselves with a radiant expression on the face
of the doctor, whose steadfast, piercing glances seemed to penetrate
the sick one's countenance, and reach down into his soul, in order
to divine, in its innermost recesses, his most secret feelings and
thoughts.
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