XVIII. I DISCOVER THAT I DO NOT POSSESS THE BUMP OF COMBATIVENESS.

The doctor looked grave as he answered: “My dear Bicquerot, if you ask that question seriously, I will reply. But if you are only joking, pray don’t do so any more. It is too serious a subject to laugh at.”

My father having declared that he was not joking at all, the doctor looked round him in a suspicious manner and lowered his voice as he said, “I have discovered things that would make your hair stand on end if I disclosed them to you. I have discovered a real science, an infallible science——”

“Then,” said my father, “do you seriously believe that our character and destiny in the world depend upon the form and size of the bumps on our skulls?”

“Yes; I do believe it,” answered the doctor with the air of a resigned and misunderstood genius, as he folded his hands in front of him. “Yes, I do believe it: O Bicquerot!” he repeated.

“Well, I confess,” began my father.

“Thirty years’ experiences, thirty years of study and researches, have I spent!” cried the doctor, “and have at last found the truth! Here, read this,”—he felt in the side pocket of his coat and pulled out a yellow pamphlet—“read this, I say, and the scales will drop from your eyes.”

“However, doctor, look here,” my father again tried to begin.

It was the doctor’s turn to become impatient. “It is not a question of However! it is not a question of Doctor! It is not a question of Look here! at all,” he exclaimed. “Truth is truth. Let me feel the head of the first comer, I will tell him: ‘Sir, you have such and such a bump. Very well, you will do such and such a thing; you will not be able to help it. You who have the bump of murder, you will be a murderer. Science declares that you must become a murderer!’ But he answers me: ‘I have always been a quiet, peaceable man; I have lived for fifty years in the world and have never hurt anyone yet, not even a fly!’ ‘Never mind, my friend,’ I say; ‘in two years, in ten years, you will be a murderer! and if you die without being one, remember that you would have been one, only you had no opportunity.’”

“Oh, come! that’s too much!” cried my mother, scandalized and shocked.

“Well, madame, perhaps I exaggerate a little, but it is in order that you may understand me better,” and the doctor proceeded to tell us many extraordinary things which I did not in the least understand, and which made my mother very indignant and my father discontented. He went on laying down the law, without attending to any remarks or objections made by his listeners; at last he finished up a long confused rigmarole with the following words:—

“Now, madame, be good enough to look at your husband’s head. If you look, you will see on each side of the head, just above the ear, a large protuberance. This is the bump of combativeness, of courage, or, if you like it better, heroism. Very well, madame, that same bump is to be found on all the old Roman heads. When you next go to Paris, go to the Louvre, and notice the Roman busts and statues there, and you will see I am right. Whoever has that bump, if he was hatched by a chicken, brought up amongst hares, and nourished all his life upon nothing but pap, would yet be a brave man, everywhere, and always. Let who may say the reverse.”

I instinctively put up my hand to my head to feel in the place indicated by the doctor. Alas! in place of a bump I discovered a deep hollow! I felt quite ill! the doctor’s words sounded like a distant and indistinct rumble. I felt the sort of despair that a sick man experiences when, thinking he is recovering, having been buoyed up by the hopeful words of friends, all his hopes are dashed to the ground by some brutal doctor who tells him, without any preparation, that his case is hopeless and he must die.