Franz-Anton Mesmer

“ Let us hope that among the musicians of France there will speedily arise some few who, unfettered by the bonds of fashion, and devoid of egotism, will turn with a pure and deeply poetic spirit to the piano-forte works of Beethoven, and draw freely from the ever-living waters of that sacred well which the Muses have consecrated. Much has already been done in France by Franz Liszt, who so thoroughly comprehends the spirit of Beethoven. ”

“ Melchior one day partaking rather too freely of a rich liquor at a city feast, died suddenly, without having time even to make his will. His son, however, having just attained the age of manhood, succeeded to the whole of the property. Franz was a noble-spirited youth, endowed with many excellent qualities. Health glowed on his cheek, while content and animation shone in his dark eyes. He grew like a vigorous plant, which only requires water and a hardier soil to bear noble fruit, but which shoots to waste in too luxuriant ground. ”

“ Franz replied. "Let us go! We will hinder no one!"
"I speak for Franz and Caesar," Jean Greb urged. "I have known both all their lives, and I have never known either to hinder anyone. There are few men [141] in Dornblatt who can equal Franz's skill on the snow."
Anton Martek said, "I also speak for Franz. He calls himself stupid because he is unable to understand that which is written in books. But he knows well the arts of the snow and the mountains."
The Prior nodded. "Then go. You too, Anton, and Father Mark. Father Benjamin will guide, and may God go with all of you!" ”

“ Anton said.
"That I know," agreed Franz. "But I cannot escape a feeling that I betrayed Professor Luttman. I am sure he knows I am just a maronnier at St. Bernard Hospice. Father Paul, the village priest who acted on my behalf in order that I might come here, would have told him. I am also sure that, on the day he expelled me from his school, he knew I would always hold a humble station."
"He is a wise man?" Anton questioned.
"Very wise," Franz replied.
"The wise do not have to be told that the world is made up of the humble and the mighty," Anton said. ”

“ Besides Caesar, he had two firm friends at the Hospice, Father Benjamin and Anton Martek. The other two maronniers were surly individuals who kept much to themselves. Franz did not even know their names. The novices, boys about Franz's own [97] age, were much too busy with their own duties to have any time for a mere maronnier. Naturally it was unthinkable, aside from attending devotions, to intrude on the world of the priests. Father Benjamin, who came to the stable at regular intervals, had made a real effort to strengthen a friendship that began when he and Franz came up the path together. ”

“ The consequences of this excess must inevitably follow, and the gigantic enterprises of this kind that are so frequently seen and heard of, resting on insecure foundations, will, by degrees, fall of themselves, after doing much more injury than benefit to the art.
[22] Count Franz of Brunswick, Baron J. Gleichenstein, Baron Pasqualati, M. de Zmeskall, M. and Madame Streicher, and Moritz Count von Lichnowsky.
[23] This document, in Beethoven's own handwriting, has lately been left in charge of Messrs. ”

“ He hired a sumptuous apartment, which he opened to all comers who chose to make trial of the new power of nature. M. D'Eslon, a physician of great reputation, became a convert; and from that time, Animal Magnetism, or, as some called it, Mesmerism, became the fashion in Paris. The women were quite enthusiastic about it, and their admiring tattle wafted its fame through every grade of society. Mesmer was the rage; and high and low, rich and poor, credulous and unbelieving, all hastened to convince themselves of the power of this mighty magician, who made such magnificent promises. ”

“ Mesmer wished these societies to sanction his discovery, not to act as judges of its truth, of which he says there can be no reasonable doubt. He offered them a series of dogmatic propositions, setting forth the nature of animal magnetism, and apparently desired the cures to be considered a subordinate [183] part of the issue. He was, however, continuously engaged in curing disease. His most valuable convert was M. Deslon, a member of the Medical Faculty of Paris, a man of considerable influence, who at once espoused Mesmer's cause with unlimited enthusiasm. ”

“ The ability to cure disease without the use of medicines or surgical appliances has been claimed by alleged healers in all ages. When such cures were effected, they were attributed to a special gift with which the healer was divinely endowed, and this gift was bestowed, in rare instances, upon individuals who were distinguished by especial sanctity. Mesmer did not claim this quality, and yet he performed cures which were as notable as those of any saint or inspired healer of earlier times. He believed that through animal magnetism a direct physical effect was exerted upon the human body. ”

“ METZ, Herman A., man of affairs and publicist, b. in New York City, 19 Oct., 1867, son of Edward J. and Frances Metz, both natives of Germany who came to the United States in 1848. He was born on the lower East Side whence so many self-made men have sprung, and his earliest years were marked by toil and self-sacrifice. It has always been his proud boast that after he had attained his twelfth year, he never cost his parents a penny. While attending the public schools he earned enough money selling newspapers to cover his living expenses. ”

“ Metz is a noble city: finely situated, strongly fortified, and thickly inhabited. The Moselle encircles a portion of it in a very picturesque manner. The inn, called the Cheval Blanc, should rather be that of Cheval Noir--if it take its epithet from the colour of the interior--for a dirtier hotel can scarcely exist. It was a fine moonlight night when we left Metz, on a Sunday, resolving to sleep two stages on the road. ”

“ The best view of Metz and the surrounding country is to be obtained from the top of the Cathedral tower. Here one realizes the immense importance of the forts, of which the Moselle is a kind of natural moat. On the left bank the steeply rising hills form natural defences, while the lower hills on the right bank are reinforced by the line of forts. From their gleam in the distance one gets a better idea of the number of waterways which surround and run through Metz—the River Seille, the streams of St. ”

“ The first view of Metz, after traversing an uninteresting country, is remarkably fine. It stands in a fine rich plain, near though beyond the reach of an eminence—for it does not deserve the name of a mountain—the sides of which are covered with woods, villages, and vineyards. There is something very grand in entering a fortified Town—the clattering of drawbridges, appearance of moats, guns, sentinels, and all the other etceteras of war. ”

“ Now, however, she could refuse Ernest nothing, and before the day of parting came they had made a confidante of Meeta's mother, and from her the two fathers had learned the desires of their children. Carl Werner heard the story with a smile; but a denser shadow gathered on the dark brow of Franz. For a moment something of his father's pride was in his heart; but his own blighted life arose before him, and he said, "The boy may do as he pleases. No man has a right to control another on such a subject." ”

“ Neither was it love that besieged his peace; for, except Miss Lily Prior, old Tom the brewer's daughter, who sat in the same pew at church, Sommerset had never been known to look on one of womankind with attention. Perhaps the carefulness of his education might have done it. Life could not be entirely folded up like a napkin, and put into its proper drawer; and everything annoyed Sommerset Cloudesly. The coming off of his waistcoat button was the destruction of Messina. The world was going to ruin if his horse lost a shoe. ”

“ When Mesmer appeared in Paris, exhibiting his claims to Magnetism, he was ridiculed, and treated as a humbug. The French Academy of Science, after due consideration, pronounced Mesmerism a fraud. This was the more remarkable from the fact that many of the experiments in Mesmerism are so simple that a child can demonstrate them to the entire satisfaction of an unprejudiced person. ”

“ On July 25th, for the first time in the history of the University of Strasbourg, a professor was hissed out of his lecture room. He had said that the Prussians could speak better French than the Alsatians. The most serious demonstration which has occurred in Metz since the annexation, took place on Sunday evening, January 8, 1910, when the police broke up forcibly a concert given by a local society. The newspapers of Metz claimed that this was a private gathering, to which individual invitations had been sent, and was neither public nor political. ”

“ The people of Mesvin, the Somme, the Tamise, and the Seine were contemporaries. The race of Mesvin inhabited Hainault at the same time as the troglodytes, whom they did not know. It might have been the people of Mesvin and the Somme, who, gradually attaining to polished stone, invaded the country occupied by the less advanced people of the caverns. M. Virchow could not recommend too much prudence to those who are investigating the science of anthropology. In prehistoric times, as in our day, there were variations of the same race, but that is not accounted for by atavism. ”

“ There is no man alive who knows one-half as much about the strategical position of Metz and the surrounding country as General von Heeringen. Often on stormy, bitter cold winter nights, sentries on outposts stationed and guarding the approaches of Metz are startled to find a gaunt, limping figure, covered in a gray army greatcoat with no distinguishing marks, stalking along. ”

“ Ladies in search of emotions—the hysteric, the idle, the puling, and the ultra-sentimental crowded to his saloons, as ladies similarly predisposed had crowded to Mesmer's sixty years before. Peers, members of the House of Commons, philosophers, men of letters, and physicians came in great numbers—some to believe, some to doubt, and a few to scoff. M. Dupotet continued his experiments, and at last made several important converts. Most important of all for a second Mesmer, he found a second D'Eslon. ”

“ The adepts of Mesmer and of De Puysegur, the seekers after the philosopher's stone, the Nicolaites of Berlin, the illuminati of Bavaria, enlarged the boundaries of human credulity, and the men who succumbed in the most naïve and foolish manner to these wretched weaknesses of mind, were precisely the haughtiest philosophers, those who had prided themselves the most on their distinction as free-thinkers. ”

“ I've enough for my wife and myself; nothing more is needed than to provide for my son!"
"Very well," cried Meiser; "I'll charge myself with the education of the little fellow!"
"Now, during the dozen days since I again became a citizen of the world, there is one word that I've heard spoken everywhere. At Paris, as well as at Berlin, people no longer speak of anything but millions; there is no longer any talk of anything else, and everybody's mouth is full of millions. ”

“ He used to listen to the stories of these tried companions, and tremble from head to foot when he was told how the wicked Frederick Metzel, on a dark and dismal winter’s night, had been claimed in pursuance of a contract, attested by his own hand and seal, and carried off by the devil, amid great lightning and thunder, to no one knew whither; for the place of his abode was beyond the power of human discovery. ”

“ Mesmer himself was a very erratic, unscientific man, who either did not or would not arrange his observations into scientific order, from which logical deductions might have been made. Therefore, his whole teaching may be counted rather among the curiosities of literature, than as having any value to the mind of one who seeks the truth. Life is too short to waste much time upon such fruitless speculations."
"I am glad that you agree with me," said Leon. ”

“ In 1853 Semper left London for Zurich on his appointment as professor of architecture, and with a commission to build in that town the polytechnic school and the hospital. He also built the observatory and the railway station in that city. Here, too, he made plans for a large theatre in Rio Janeiro. In 1870 he was called to Vienna to assist in the great architectural projects since carried out around the Ring. A year later, after an exile of over twenty years, he received a summons to Dresden, on the rebuilding of the first opera-house, which had been destroyed by fire in 1869 ”

“ Your firmness astonishes me."
"But what do you think of Hermann?" said one of the guests, pointing to a young engineer. "He has never had a card in his hand in his life, he has never in his life laid a wager; and yet he sits here till five o'clock in the morning watching our play."
"Play interests me very much," said Hermann, "but I am not in the position to sacrifice the necessary in the hope of winning the superfluous."
"Hermann is a German; he is economical—that is all!" observed Tomsky. ”

“ Here Lady Meskell, somewhat to my surprise, burst into peals of laughter. She sat down and rubbed her fat hands together cheerfully. “You are a very good girl,” she said. “I thought you were from the first. But I was just making sure. No; unromantic though it may seem, there is no liaison between myself and the man—he happens to be a cook—whom you saw leaving the garden. But amid your mistakes you made one or two very happy guesses. It is true that he took my pearls, and that I knew all along he had taken than, and that I knew his name. ”