What did he see in me? What did I mean to him? What did he want from me? He didn’t say, and I didn’t ask. Not once did we attempt to breach our respective alibis. The truth was suspended between us, binding us, unacknowledged and ever-present. It was sufficient to me to be near him, a friend and ally on the surface, but always keeping a watchful eye over him, like a guardian, looking out for a sign that he might once again wreak the havoc I knew he was capable of. I felt a responsibility for him. I never had a plan as such, and in the glow of our friendship, the violence I knew was in him never revealed itself. It seemed I might achieve my purpose simply by being by his side. In all our years of friendship, there were no murders, no eye-gougings. Did I need to wait for him to kill again to act? And, if so, what could I have done? I would surely have had to kill him in turn. I never felt even remotely capable of such an act. What would I have used for the purpose? A pistol? A knife? Poison? It was all unthinkable, and given how perfectly content we were in each other’s company, I deemed it preferable to let things slide.

I’d decided I didn’t wish to spend my life as a glorified vaudevillian preying on the credulity of the uneducated and broken-hearted. I wished a more respectable destiny for myself. Artopoulos had planted a seed in me, that day over lunch, a seed that grew, watered by my inherited skills in mesmerism, by his encouragement, and by my own interest in understanding the mechanism behind the act of crossing. I would become, I resolved, an alienist. I began to study psychology, at first as an observer of the lectures, for I had no formal qualifications. At the Sorbonne, I took meticulous notes in the lecture hall and, afterward, read everything I could in the libraries. I took tutors and volunteered to be a laboratory assistant. Artopoulos pulled some strings on my behalf and before long I was admitted as a student.

Within a year of my arrival, I had been accepted into the preparatory classes to study medicine. In 1908 I graduated as a doctor, and began higher studies in psychology. From the start, I’d resolved that my methods would be unorthodox: I would use hypnosis in the treatment of my patients. The idea was not new. It had already been entertained and, ultimately, rejected by the previous generation of alienists. But I had one advantage they didn’t have.

Along the way I studied under Alfred Binet at the Laboratory of Physiological Psychology. Later, I researched retrograde amnesia under Théodule-Armand Ribot, assisted Théodore Flournoy in his study of cryptonmesia, and attended the lectures of Pierre Janet at the Collège de France on memory, trauma, neurotic dissociation, and the subconscious.