Louis was caught in a trap of exquisite cruelty. He was convinced of Dr. Pym's scientific genius, yet equally convinced that the man was an unwitting pawn in a sophisticated Jacobin plot. To refuse Pym's help would be to condemn his son to certain death. To accept it would be to knowingly place his family's fate, and his own, into the hands of his enemies. He felt like a man in a desert dying of thirst, who has just been offered a canteen of water by the very man who led him into the wasteland. Is it salvation, or is it poison?
He could not afford to refuse. Not yet. He needed more information. He had tested the man; now he needed to test the science. He made his decision. He would allow Dr. Pym to examine the Dauphin. But it would be done under his own, exacting, and deeply paranoid conditions.
The scene in the royal nursery later that day was one of almost unbearable tension. The air was thick with a fragile, brittle silence. Dr. Lassonne, the court physician, was present, his face a mask of deep professional offense and suspicion. He stood by the fireplace, his arms crossed, a silent, disapproving sentinel of the old guard. Marie Antoinette sat in a high-backed chair, her hands clenched so tightly in her lap that her knuckles were white. She had been told only that this new English doctor had a radical theory the King wished to explore. She watched with a mixture of raw, desperate hope and profound terror.
And Louis stood by the foot of the bed, a hawk-eyed guardian, his entire being focused on the slightest movement, the slightest deviation from the protocols he had set. He had become the ultimate gatekeeper to his son's life.
Dr. Pym entered the room, and the atmosphere grew even more tense. He had been instructed on the procedure he was to follow. He was not to be alone with the prince for a single second. He was to touch nothing without the King's explicit permission.
His examination was unlike anything the royal household had ever witnessed. It was a strange, almost alien ritual of a future medicine. He did not speak of humors or miasmas. He did not make passes with his hands or consult astrological charts. He was a modern clinician, and his every action was precise, methodical, and purposeful.
He began not by approaching the patient, but by preparing himself. He wore a clean, simple linen apron over his clothes. He produced a small bottle of clear alcohol and a clean cloth and proceeded to wash his hands meticulously, a bizarre and seemingly pointless act that made Dr. Lassonne audibly scoff. Louis, however, watched this act of sterilization with a knot of tension in his gut beginning to loosen. This man understood.
Only then did he approach the Dauphin's bed. He spoke to the boy with a gentle, quiet kindness that immediately set the child at ease. His first diagnostic tool was a primitive stethoscope, a simple, hollow wooden tube of his own design. He placed one end gently on the boy's chest and his ear to the other, closing his eyes in deep concentration, listening to the faint, fluttering rhythms of his heart and lungs.
Next, he examined the boy's afflicted joints. His touch was not the rough prodding of the royal physicians, but the precise, analytical palpation of an expert. He gently explored the extent of the swelling, the rigidity of the limb, the loci of the pain, his brow furrowed in thought.
Then came the most shocking moment. He opened his leather bag and produced a small, sterile lancet, its steel tip gleaming in the light. He turned to Louis. "Your Majesty, with your permission, I must procure a sample of the prince's blood. A single drop is all I require."
A gasp came from Marie Antoinette. Dr. Lassonne took a half-step forward, his face a thundercloud. Bleeding a child so weak was barbarism. But Louis, who had been expecting this, who understood the diagnostic necessity, gave a single, sharp nod. "Proceed."
Pym was swift and expert. A tiny prick on the Dauphin's fingertip, a single, perfect crimson bead welling up. He carefully touched the blood to a thin, clean plate of glass, then gently placed another plate on top, sealing the sample. It was a perfect, 18th-century microscope slide.
He had one final, even stranger request. "Your Majesty," he said, his voice hesitant but firm. "My theory requires a comparative sample. I must ask for a small quantity of milk from a cow in the royal dairy. Specifically, a cow that is afflicted with the common, harmless ailment known to your farmers as 'the pox.'"
If his earlier actions had been strange, this was utter madness. He wanted diseased milk. The request was so bizarre that no one even knew how to object. Louis, his mind racing, understood the logic—the connection to Jenner, to vaccination—and gave his assent.
Pym spent the next twenty-four hours in a small antechamber that Louis had ordered converted into a makeshift laboratory. He had brought his most precious possession with him from London: a powerful, state-of-the-art brass microscope, a jewel of optical engineering that was leagues ahead of anything at the Academy of Sciences. For hours on end, he sat hunched over the instrument, a solitary priest in a temple of science, the candlelight reflecting in his spectacles. He meticulously compared the slide of the Dauphin's blood to a slide prepared from the diseased cow's milk, and to dozens of other slides he had brought with him in a specially protected case—a veritable library of microscopic life.
Finally, on the second day, he requested another audience with the King. Louis, Marie Antoinette, and Lassonne gathered in the study. The mood was electric with a desperate, fragile hope.
Pym entered. His face was pale with exhaustion, but his eyes were burning with a strange, almost frightening light. It was the expression of a man who has just stared into the face of a new and terrible truth.
"Your Majesty," he began, his voice trembling slightly, not with nerves, but with the sheer weight of what he was about to say. "I have completed my initial examination. And I must report that my findings are… extraordinary. And deeply, deeply troubling."
He took a deep breath, trying to compose himself. "The affliction in the young prince… it is as I suspected. It is caused by an infinitesimal, living organism. I have seen it with my own eyes." He gestured to his microscope. "But… it is not the common form of the wasting disease, the phthisis that I expected to find. The organism is… different. A variant I have never before encountered. It appears more aggressive, more resilient. Its structure is subtly but profoundly altered."
He then delivered the devastating, hope-crushing conclusion. "Furthermore, the standard preventative inoculation I have been developing—the one derived from the bovine sickness, from cowpox—I can now say with certainty that it will not work. The organism from the cow and the organism from the prince are too dissimilar. An inoculation with the cowpox would be utterly useless against this particular strain. It would be like trying to use a key for the wrong lock."
The fragile bubble of hope that had sustained the room for two days burst. Marie Antoinette let out a small, wounded sob and buried her face in her hands. Dr. Lassonne shot Pym a look of dark, triumphant vindication. All this madness, for nothing.
"But," Pym continued, his voice suddenly gaining strength, his eyes locking with the King's, a fanatical, scientific gleam in them now. "The theory is not wrong. The principle remains sound. To defeat such a disease, one must introduce a related but weaker strain to teach the body to recognize and destroy it. Since no such natural, weaker strain exists for the Prince's unique and virulent condition…"
He paused, taking another deep breath before proposing the truly unthinkable, a leap of scientific imagination so vast and so dangerous it bordered on insanity.
"We must create one. We must take a sample of the living organism from the Prince himself, cultivate it, and then attenuate it—weaken it—through my experimental process of controlled heating. And then," he finished, his voice dropping to an intense whisper, "we must re-introduce it into his body. A direct inoculation with the weakened form of his own living disease. It is a terrible risk. But it is the only chance he has."
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