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“Come again to-morrow.”

21st August

I returned next day. On the steps of the Empire chateau I encountered the family doctor. He is a spare, elderly man whom you meet wherever there is good music to be heard. He seems like a man perpetually listening to the harmonies of some inward concert. He is for ever under the spell of sounds and lives by his ear alone. He is specially noted for his treatment of nervous complaints. Some say he is a genius; others that he is mad. Certainly there is something peculiar about him. When I saw him he was coming down the steps; his feet, his finger and his lips moving in time to some intricate measure.

“Well, doctor,” I said with an involuntary quaver in my voice, “and how is your little patient?”

“She means to live,” he answered.

“You will pull her through for us, won’t you?” I said eagerly.

“I tell you she means to live.”

“And you think, doctor, that people live just as long as they really want to and that we do not die save with our own consent?”

“Certainly.”

I walked with him along the gravel path. He stopped for a moment at the gate, his head bowed as if in thought.

“Certainly,” he said again, “but they must really want to and not merely think they want to. Conscious will is an illusion that can deceive none save the vulgar. People who believe they will a thing because they say they will it, are fools. The only genuine act of volition is that in which all the obscure forces of our nature take part. That will is unconscious, it is divine. It moulds the world. By it we exist, and when it fails we cease to be. The world wills, otherwise it would not exist.”

We walked on a few steps farther.

“Look here,” he exclaimed, tapping his stick against the bark of an oak tree that spread out its broad canopy of grey branches above our heads, “if that fellow there had not willed to grow, I should like to know what power could have made him do so.”

But I had ceased to listen.

“So you have hopes,” I said at length, “that Marguerite . . .”

But he was a stubborn little old fellow.

He murmured as he walked away: “The Will’s crowning Victory is Love.”

And I stood and watched him as he departed with little quick steps, beating time to a tune that was running in his head.

I went quickly back to the chateau and found little Marguerite. The moment I saw her, I realized that she had the will to live. She was still very pale and very thin, but her eyes had more colour in them and were not so big, and her lips, lately so dead-looking and so silent, were gay with prattling talk.

“You are late,” she said. “Come here, see! I have a theatre and actors. Play me a beautiful piece. They say that ‘Hop o’ my Thumb’ is nice. Play ‘Hop o’ my Thumb’ for me.”

You may be sure I did not refuse. However, I encountered great difficulties at the very outset of my undertaking. I pointed out to Marguerite that the only actors she had were princes and princesses, and that we wanted woodmen, cooks and a certain number of folks of all sorts.

She thought for a moment and then said:

“A prince dressed like a cook; that one there looks like a cook, don’t you think?”

“Yes, I think so too.”

“Well, then, we’ll make woodmen and cooks out of all the princes we have over.”

And that’s what we did. O Wisdom, what a day we spent together!

Many others like it followed in its train. I watched Marguerite taking an ever firmer hold on life. Now she is quite well again. I had a share in this miracle. I discovered a tiny portion of that gift wherein the apostles so richly abounded when they healed the sick by the laying on of hands.

Editor’s Note.–I found this manuscript in a train on the Northern Railway. I give it to the public without alteration of any sort, save that, as the names were those of well-known persons, I have thought it well to suppress them.