“We were in haste to return to his mother, and took the express train for Bordeaux. The child was overcome with fatigue by the journey, and I should also say by his emotions, were it not for his peaceable and 107 constant calmness in spite of his sudden cure, which overwhelmed him with joy, but did not astonish him. He wanted to go to bed on reaching home. He was extremely sleepy, and took no supper. His mother, who had nearly died of joy before our return, when she saw him so exhausted and refusing to eat, was seized by a horrible doubt. She told me that I had deceived her, and I had the greatest difficulty in making myself believed. But how she rejoiced when, the next morning, Jules sat down at our table, and breakfasted with a better appetite than ourselves. It was not till then that she became reassured.” “And since then,” I asked him, “has there been no relapse?” “No, sir, absolutely none. I may say that the cure progressed, or rather consolidated itself, considering that it had been as complete as it was instantaneous. The transition from a disease so fixed and obstinate to a perfect cure was made without the least gradation, though it was without apparent disturbance. But his general health improved visibly, under the influence of a restorative regimen, the salutary effects of which it was full time for him to experience.” “And the physicians? Have they testified to Jules’s previous condition? Certainly they should have done so.” “I thought so too, sir, and mentioned the subject to the Bordeaux doctor who had been the last to attend my child; but he maintained a reserve which prevented me from insisting. As for Dr. Roques of Toulouse, to whom I wrote immediately, he hastened to recognize in the clearest terms the miraculous nature of the fact which had occurred, and which was entirely beyond the powers of medicine. ‘In view of this cure, so long desired and so promptly effected,’ he said to me, ‘why not quit the narrow sphere of scientific explanations, and open one’s mind to gratitude for so strange an event, in which Providence seems to obey the voice of a child?’ He rejected most decidedly, as a physician, the theories which are always produced on such occasions of ‘moral excitement,’ ‘the effect of the imagination,’ etc., and confessed frankly in this event the clear and positive action of a superior Being revealing himself and imposing himself on the conscience. Such, sir, was the opinion of M. Roques, physician of Toulouse, who knew as well as myself the previous condition and the illness of my son. There is his own letter, dated February 24.