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soldier handing me a message.’
    Victorine takes a crumpled piece of paper from behind the ruffle at the neck of her blue velvet dress. She hands me the note.
     
    Mademoiselle Victorine Meurent I am dreaming of your kindness and that you will come and get me because the policemen are animals who think that when a woman needs to sell her body she should give it away for free and that it is a game to beat her and whilst this goes on there is no hope of making enough money to pay for the keep of an invalid mother some snotty-nosed kids and a father who drinks spirits till he beats her Bella Laffaire
     
    ‘“I need to paint,” I told the boy, but he just stood there silently until I waved my arms in the air from the sheer frustration of being disturbed and said, “Where is she?”
    ‘He led me to the police station where they kept me waiting for half an hour. Then a gendarme with a fat stomach said that I could take her if I gave him twenty francs. Twenty francs! He thought I was her madam. I paid the money and believed that would be the end of it but she followed me home. She stood on the pavement for half an hour shouting up at me about the French court, many lovers and having her head cut off, and that’s where I found her this morning, trying to sleep off her madness under a tree.’

 
     
     
     
    Meeting with Charcot
    April 22nd
     
    ‘ The highest ideal of cure is rapid, gentle and permanent restoration of the health, or removal and annihilation of the disease in its whole extent, in the shortest, most reliable, and most harmless way, on easily comprehensible principles.’
    Samuel Hahnemann , The Organon of Medicine.
     
    Charcot comes towards me. He has a doctor at either side and his commanding voice fills the air.
    ‘ Doctor Gachet, the other day a new staff nurse was confined to a room with a young madwoman who was not yet admitted to this hospital. Your orders, I believe. Perhaps you would like to enlighten me?’
    ‘Well, yes, I’ve been wanting to talk to you … .’
    ‘Lots of paperwork and we still don’t know who brought her here.’
    ‘It was a friend of mine. I’d like to talk to you about her treatment.’
    ‘I’ve booked her in for electroshock therapy.’ Doctor Charcot takes his watch from his top pocket and studies it. ‘If there’s anything more, you’ll have to keep up with me,’ he says, walking away hurriedly. His accomplices and I follow like a snake on his tail as he continues to speak. ‘I’ve read your thesis on melancholia. There is no doubt that you have been very thoughtful on the subject. You should study hypnotherapy amongst other practises. Embrace the future, Gachet. You know, I’ve started to wonder if memories live on long after we are conscious of them, and influence who we are to become. Doctor Gachet, do you believe that to be true?’
    ‘Yes, I do, and I also believe in another of your theories, that symptoms are the expression of a diseased organ. Doctor Charcot, why not the same theory for symptoms expressed by the mind?’
    ‘“ Why not?” indeed.’
    Charcot pushes his way through a series of heavy wooden doors and lets them swing backwards. I must slip through quickly behind him or else be struck.
    ‘I think that when a person is fragile and cannot face their own emotions, something shatters inside them – but supposing there is a medicine that mirrors a patient’s disturbance exactly and, in doing so, strengthens their inner resolve?’
    Charcot stops and looks at me.
    ‘What type of medicine?’
    ‘A dynamic medicine : homeopathy.’
    Charcot’s cronies laugh into their fists and turn around to try and hide their mocking amusement. The man himself remains serious but silent then after some time continues to march.
    We have entered the hospital library and arrived at the staircase leading down to the reading room: oak-panelled walls, a huge drawing room fit for Napoleon himself; bow-legged walnut sideboards; portraits of Generals; tasselled