In the meantime Dr Lefevre had been pondering the details of the affair, and noting the aspects of his patient's condition; but the more he noted and pondered, the more contorted and inexplicable did the mystery become. His understanding boggled at its very first notes. It was almost unheard of that a young man of his patient's strong and healthy constitution and temper should be hypnotised or mesmerised at all, much less hypnotised to the verge of dissolution; and it was unprecedented that even a weak, hysterical subject should, after being unhypnotised, remain so long in prostrate exhaustion. Then, suppose these circumstances of the case were ordinary, there arose this question, which refused to be solved: Since it was ridiculous to suppose that the hypnotisation was a wanton experiment, and since it had not been for the sake of robbery, what had been its object? The interest of the case was emphasised and enlarged by an article in 'The Daily Telegraph,' in which was called to mind the singular story in its Paris correspondence a day or two before, of the young woman in the Hôtel-Dieu, which Lefevre had forgotten. The writer remarked on the points of similarity which the case in the Brighton train bore to that of the Paris pavement; insisted on the probable identity of the man in the fur coat with the man in the cloak; and appealed to Dr Lefevre to explain the mystery, and to the police to find the man "who has alarmed the civilised world by a new form of outrage." Lefevre was piqued by that article, and he went to see his patient day after day, in the constant hope of finding a solution of the puzzle that perplexed him. The direction in which he looked for light will be best suggested by remarking what were his peculiar theory and practice. Lefevre was not a materialistic physician; indeed, in the opinion of many of his brethren, he erred on the other side, and was too much inclined to mysticism. It may at least be said that he had an open mind, and a modest estimate of the discoveries of modern medical science. He had perceived while still a young man (he was now about forty) that all medical practice--as distinct from surgical--is inexact and empirical, that, like English common law, it is based merely on custom, and a narrow range of experience; and he had therefore argued that a wider experience and research, especially among decaying nations, might lead to the discovery of a guiding principle in pathology. That conviction had taken him as medical officer to Egypt and India, where, amid the relics of civilisations half as old as time, he found traditions of a great scientific practice; and thence it had brought him back to study such foreign medical writers as Du Bois-Reymond, Nobili, Matteucci, and Müller, and to observe the method of the famous physicians of the Salpétrière. Like the great Charbon, he made nervous and hysterical disorders his specialty, in the treatment of which he was much given to the use of electricity.