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--"
At that instant a still more piercing cry echoed through the house,
and froze us with horror.
"There! that is what I listened to all day long last year," said the
banker's wife. "It made me jump in my chair and rasped my nerves
dreadfully. But, strange to say, poor Taillefer, though he suffers
untold agony, is in no danger of dying.
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