The lack of self-confidence indicated by the palmist was confirmed by Zola to Dr. Toulouse, who found that the novelist's doubt of himself was excessive and unreasonable. He frequently feared that he might be unable to accomplish his daily task, finish the book he had begun, or conclude the speech he was delivering. At one period, before he could go to bed he had to satisfy a peculiar craving to touch and retouch certain articles of furniture, open and reopen certain drawers. Arithmomania pursued him: he was for ever counting the gas lamps in one or another street, and the number of the houses. He long believed multiples of three to be of good augury, but later, as he told Goncourt, multiples of seven inspired him with most confidence. Moreover, he was so susceptible to thunder and lightning that whenever a storm burst over Médan all the shutters had to be closed and all the lamps lighted, after which he would often bandage his eyes with a handkerchief. Even when there was no storm and he found himself in absolute darkness, he was occasionally troubled by what seemed to be luminous phenomena. A dreadful idea came to him now and then: it was that his heart had moved into his arm or his thigh, and that he could feel it beating there. It must be said, too, that he was most sensitive to physical pain[5] and extremely subject to emotion, which brought on attacks of a form of angina from which he suffered, periodically, over a period of thirty years. The insults levelled at him by unscrupulous journalists, as much with respect to the alleged obscenity of his writings as to his share in the Dreyfus case, constantly led to such attacks, but his mind being always superior to his body, he never swerved from what he regarded as his duty--the enunciation of inconvenient truths--even though he knew he would be savagely denounced for it and that his ailment would necessarily return. Briefly, as Dr. Toulouse has said, his _émotivité_, although morbid, always left his mind in a state of perfect lucidity and equilibrium. To the psychologist and the physician his example demonstrated, in the most unimpeachable manner, the authority of the mind over the body, the power of the will over disease.