The Cure had told his brother the story, and had been met by a keen, astonished interest in the unknown man on Vadrome Mountain.

A slight pressure on the brain from accident had before now produced loss of memory--the great man's professional curiosity was aroused: he saw a nice piece of surgical work ready to his hand; he asked to be taken to Vadrome Mountain.
Now the Cure had lived long out of the world, and was not in touch with the swift-minded action and adventuring intellects of such men as his brother, Marcel Loisel.

Was it not tempting Providence, a surgical operation?
He was so used to people getting ill and getting well without a doctor--the nearest was twenty miles distant--or getting ill and dying in what seemed a natural and preordained way, that to cut open a man's head and look into his brain, and do this or that to his skull, seemed almost sinful.

Was it not better to wait and see if the poor man would not recover in God's appointed time?
In answer to his sensitively eager and diverse questions, Marcel Loisel replied that his dear Cure was merely mediaeval, and that he had sacrificed his mental powers on the altar of a simple faith, which might remove mountains but was of no value in a case like this, where, clearly, surgery was the only providence.
At this the Cure got to his feet, came over, laid his hand on his brother's shoulder, and said, with tears in his eyes: "Marcel, you shock me.

Indeed you shock me!" Then he twisted a knot in his cassock cords, and added "Come then, Marcel.