"Avram Davidson - Kings Evil" - читать интересную книгу автора (Davidson Avram)

"Oh, sir, you are unwell," Blee said, in a fawning tone, and he sidled forward, followed by his minions.
And then, without warning, the room was filled with men: constables with their staves in their hands,
soldiers in red coats, Mr. Martinson, the magistrate, a tall young man looking very much like Mr. Farmer
himself, and others.
"You had better come with us, sir, I think," said the tall young man. Mr. Farmer slumped. The air of
dignity fell from him. Then he laughed vacantly.
"Very well, Fred, very well," he said. "Very well, very well. You tfrinV it best, what, what?" He
shambled forward, stopped, looked over his shoulder. "These two gentlemen " he indicated Dr.
Mainauduc and Mr. Wentworth, "treated me with great consideration. They are not to be bothered, d'ye
hear?" The magistrate bowed. Mr. Farmer went out slowly, leaning on the arm of the tall man, and
muttering, "Bothered, bothered, bothered..."
Let us return to the Memoirs.
"On this occasion [Mainauduc writes] the entire Atmosphere was so saturated with the Magnetickal
Fluid that there was cured in another part of the House a Child suffering from a Complaint long-seated
and pronounced beyond help, vfe., Scrofula, or King's Evil. There was not a Lesion or Scar or Mark
left, and all this without my even having touched him."
As to the identity of Mr. Farmer, Dr. Mainauduc is coy. He says only that he was "a Gentleman of
exceedingly high Station, exceedingly afflicted. Had I been allowed to treat him further, a Privilege denied
me, he might have been spared the terrible Malady which had already begun its Ravages, and which,
save for a few brief periods, never entirely left him.
Thus far, on this subject, The Memoirs of Dr. Mainauduc, the Mesmerist, a man of his time or behind
his time, if you prefer; or, considering that mesmerism was the forerunner of hypnotism and that the study
of hypnotism led Freud on to psychoanalysis, perhaps a man ahead of his time. Could he, perchance or
could anyone really have cured Mr. Farmer"? It is impossible to say. If certain private papers of
Frederick, Duke of York, still sealed to public inspection, could be opened, we might learn what truth
there was if any to a curious legend concerning his father. Is it really so that he evaded all who
surrounded him, and for six hours one day in early October 1788 wandered unrecognized through
London on some strange and unsuccessful quest of his own, in the month when it was finally deemed
impossible to doubt any longer that he was mad that longest-lived and most unfortunate of British Kings,
George III?
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