文档介绍：THE ATHEIST'S MASS
THE ATHEIST'S MASS
BY HONORE DE BALZAC
Translator, Clara Bell
1
THE ATHEIST'S MASS
THE ATHEIST'S MASS
Bianchon, a physician to whom science owes a fine system of
theoretical physiology, and who, while still young, made himself a
celebrity in the medical school of Paris, that central luminary to which
European doctors do homage, practised surgery for a long time before he
took up medicine. His earliest studies were guided by one of the greatest
of French surgeons, the illustrious Desplein, who flashed across science
like a meteor. By the consensus even of his enemies, he took with him to
the tomb an municable method. Like all men of genius, he had no
heirs; he carried everything in him, and carried it away with him. The
glory of a surgeon is like that of an actor: they live only so long as they are
alive, and their talent leaves no trace when they are gone. Actors and
surgeons, like great singers too, like the executants who by their
performance increase the power of music tenfold, are all the heroes of a
moment.
Desplein is a case in proof of this resemblance in the destinies of such
transient genius. His name, yesterday so famous, to-day almost forgotten,
will survive in his special department without crossing its limits. For must
there not be some extraordinary circumstances to exalt the name of a
professor from the history of Science to the general history of the human
race? Had Desplein that mand of knowledge which makes a
man the living word, the great figure of his age? Desplein had a godlike
eye; he saw into the sufferer and his malady by an intuition, natural or
acquired, which enabled him to grasp the diagnostics peculiar to the
individual, to determine the very time, the hour, the minute when an
operation should be performed, making due allowance for atmospheric
conditions and peculiarities of individual temperament. To proceed thus,
hand in hand with nature, had he then studied the constant assimil