Observations placeholder

Fabre d'Olivet Vs Napoleon: (A Historical Novel of a True Story) - Paul Smith

Fabre looks at Madame Grival, smiles, then clears his throat.

‘Madame Grival, you have been an assistant mistress at my wife’s school here for some time and we all appreciate your dedication.  You come from a respectable Swiss family and before your husband passed on you tried to have your son’s congenital deafness helped through all manner of doctors and methods, but to no avail.  He has been in Abbot Sicard’s Institute for the deaf and dumb for the past six years and has learnt sign language and is considered a bright young man’.

‘Thank you for the compliments Monsieur.  What you wish to try to do for us your dear wife has already explained and I and my son would be fools not to allow you.  He is also grateful.  He has leave from the Institute to stay with me while you attempt it.  The only questions we have are … when and where Monsieur?’

‘The present time is a great opportunity, being the New Year’s vacation!  The place?  We have many spare rooms …. I could work with him here!  Tomorrow the seventh!’

Marie clutches at her daughter.

‘Julie stop pulling at Rodolphe’s trousers, we all know how fond of him you are, we all are!’

Fabre continues.

‘I understand my friend Monsieur Ferrier knew as a student your husband Aubonne, when Rodolphe was a baby.  You must miss your husband and other children.  A … a great tragedy’

‘Monsieur Ferrier has been ver kind to Rodolphe and I …. He, he helped to get my son into Sicard’s Institite.  He speaks so highly of ou: ‘Perhaps a genius’ he says.  If you can cure Rodolpe, you will be that and more’.

‘Time will tell, Madame’.

He bows to her, stands … smiles ta his wife who gestures to Julie to come to her, she silently reluctantly does.

Now fabre slowly walks over to where Rodolphe still stands looking out the window at the falling snow.

Fabre places his hand on the boy’s shoulder.

Rodolphe flinches with shock at first, then smiles as he looks into Fabre’s calm face………………….

Behind the large desk on the wall Fabre has pinned up a chart of the inner and outer ear, he stands before it with a pointer talking……………..

‘My work on the restoration of the ancient dead Hebrew language and the consequential true translation of Genesis, the story of creation, has discovered the Word and its real meaning and I intend to use this knowledge to breathe life into Rodolphe’s silent ears, and so prove the veracity of my discovery and cure Rodolph.  It could be a long process or short, we can only try, eh my boy?.

.Fabre takes his chair over to where Rodolphe sits and gets comfortable.

Now he leans over and cups his hands over the boys left ear and softly blows, whispers, murmurs …Everyone leans forward trying to hear what he is saying, the clock on the wall shows 10.40.. The clock on the wall now shows 12.40, two hours later.  Fabre is doing exactly the same thing as the others chat quietly amongst themselves.  Marie looks across, a little tired, concerned

‘Fabre dear, you have been working on that ear for two hours.  The boy must be hungry and tired.  We all are.  Let us break for lunch then afterwards you can work on the other ear for a few hours’.

Fabre stops, then turns to her and the others, shakes his head as if to come out of a trance.

‘Yes of course.  You know it is so powerful I seem to get lost in it.  I see all history, hear all sound, feel it sgreat power in everything living, growing.  Madame tell your son he has done well, the hard dr clay is being watered, fertilised … it will take time to grow, but now , we must eat’.

…………..

Two days later on January the ninth 1811, Rodolphe sits, a kind of stupor on his face as Fabre continues to breathe the life giving sound in his ear.

[There are another 10 pages that describe the continuing process, but in the end Rodolphe is cured]

He says ‘Before I only felt sounds, but now I can really distinguish sounds and hear the noises of objects’.