him; his cries were terrible; he tried to kill himself; his daughter
was obliged to have him put into a strait-jacket and fastened to his
bed. The poor man declares there are live animals in his head gnawing
his brain; every nerve quivers with horrible shooting pains, and he
writhes in torture. He suffers so much in his head that he did not
even feel the moxas they used formerly to apply to relieve it; but
Monsieur Brousson, who is now his physician, has forbidden that
remedy, declaring that the trouble is a nervous affection, an
inflammation of the nerves, for which leeches should be applied to the
neck, and opium to the head. As a result, the attacks are not so
frequent; they appear now only about once a year, and always late in
the autumn. When he recovers, Taillefer says repeatedly that he would
far rather die than endure such torture."

"Then he must suffer terribly!" said a broker, considered a wit, who
was present.

"Oh," continued the mistress of the house, "last year he nearly died
in one of these attacks. He had gone alone to his country-house on
pressing business. For want, perhaps, of immediate help, he lay
twenty-two hours stiff and stark as though he were dead. A very hot
bath was all that saved him."

"It must be a species of lockjaw," said one of the guests.

"I don't know," she answered. "He got the disease in the army nearly
thirty years ago. He says it was caused by a splinter of wood entering
his head from a shot on board a boat. Brousson hopes to cure him. They
say the English have discovered a mode of treating the disease with
prussic acid--"