by Edmond About
CHAPTER VIII.
HOW NICHOLAS MEISER, NEPHEW OF JOHN MEISER, EXECUTED HIS UNCLE'S WILL.
Doctor Hirtz of Berlin, who had copied this will himself, apologizedvery politely for not having sent it sooner. Business had obliged him totravel away from the Capital. In passing through Dantzic, he had givenhimself the pleasure of visiting Herr Nicholas Meiser, the formerbrewer, now a very wealthy land-owner and heavy holder of stocks,sixty-six years of age. This old man very well remembered the death andwill of his uncle, the _savant_; but he did not speak of them without acertain reluctance. Moreover, he said that immediately after the deceaseof John Meiser, he had called together ten physicians of Dantzic aroundthe mummy of the Colonel; he showed also a unanimous statement of thesegentlemen, affirming that a man desiccated in a furnace cannot in anyway or by any means return to life. This certificate, drawn up by theprofessional competitors and enemies of the deceased, made no mention ofthe paper annexed to the will. Nicholas Meiser swore by all the Gods(but not without visibly coloring) that this document concerning themethods to be pursued in resuscitating the Colonel, had never been knownby himself or his wife. When interrogated regarding the reasons whichcould have brought him to part with a trust as precious as the body ofM. Fougas, he said that he had kept it in his house fifteen years withevery imaginable respect and care, but that at the end of that time,becoming beset with visions and being awakened almost every night by theColonel's ghost coming and pulling at his feet, he concluded to sell itfor twenty crowns to a Berlin amateur. Since he had been rid of thisdismal neighbor, he had slept a great deal better, but not entirely wellyet; for it had been impossible for him to forget the apparition of theColonel.
To these revelations, Herr Hirtz, physician to His Royal Highness thePrince Regent of Prussia, added some remarks of his own. He did notthink that the resuscitation of a healthy man, desiccated withprecaution, was impossible in theory; he thought also, that the processof desiccation indicated by the illustrious John Meiser was the best tofollow. But in the present case, it did not appear to him probable thatColonel Fougas could be called back to life; the atmospheric influencesand the variations of temperature which he had undergone during a periodof forty six years, must have altered the fluids and the tissues.
This was also the opinion of M. Renault and his son. To quietClementine's excitement a little, they read to her the concludingparagraphs of Prof. Hirtz' letter. They kept from her John Meiser'swill, which could have done nothing but excite her. But the littleimagination worked on without cessation, do what they would to quiet it.Clementine now sought the company of Doctor Martout, she helddiscussions with him and wanted to see experiments in the resuscitationof rotifers. When she got home again, she would think a little aboutLeon and a great deal about the Colonel. The project of marriage wasstill entertained, but no one ventured to speak about the publication ofthe bans. To the most touching endearments of her betrothed, the youngfiancee responded with disquisitions on the vital principle. Her visitsto the Renaults' house were paid less to the living than to the dead.All the arguments they put in use to cure her of a foolish hope servedonly to throw her into a profound melancholy. Her beautiful complexiongrew pale, the brilliancy of her glance died away. Undermined by ahidden disorder, she lost the amiable vivacity which had appeared to bethe sparkling of youth and joy. The change must have been verynoticeable, for even Mlle. Sambucco, who had not a mother's eyes, wastroubled about it.
M. Martout, satisfied that this malady of the spirit would not yield toany but a moral treatment, came to see her one morning, and said:
"My dear child, although I cannot well explain to myself the greatinterest that you take in this mummy, I have done something for it andfor you. I am going to send the little piece of ear that Leon broke offto M. Karl Nibor."
Clementine opened all her eyes.
"Don't you understand me?" continued the Doctor. "The thing is, to findout whether the humors and tissues of the Colonel have undergonematerial alterations. M. Nibor, with his microscope, will tell us thestate of things. One can rely upon him: he is an infallible genius. Hisanswer will tell us if it be well to proceed to the resuscitation of ourman, or whether nothing is left but to bury him."
"What!" cried the young girl. "One can tell whether a man is dead orliving, by sample?"
"Nothing more is required by Doctor Nibor. Forget your anxieties, then,for a week. As soon as the answer comes, I will give it to you to read.I have stimulated the curiosity of the great physiologist: he knowsabsolutely nothing about the fragment I send him. But if, to suppose animpossibility, he tells us that the piece of ear belongs to a soundbeing, I will beg him to come to Fontainebleau and help us restore hislife."
This vague glimmer of hope dissipated Clementine's melancholy, andbrought back her buoyant health. She again began to sing and laugh andflutter about the garden at her aunt's, and the house at M. Renault's.The tender communings began again, the wedding was once more talkedover, and the first ban was published.
"At last," said Leon, "I have found her again."
But Madame Renault, that wise and cautious mother, shook her head sadly.
"All this goes but half well," said she. "I do not like to have mydaughter-in-law so absorbed with that handsome dried-up fellow. What arewe to expect when she knows that it is impossible to bring him to lifeagain? Will the black butterflies[1] then fly away? And suppose theyhappen, by a miracle, to reanimate him! are you sure she will not fallin love with him? Indeed, Leon must have thought it very necessary tobuy this mummy, and I call it money well invested!"
One Sunday morning M. Martout rushed in upon the old professor, shoutingvictory.
Here is the answer which had come to him from Paris:--
"My dear _confrere_:
"I have received your letter, and the little fragment of tissue whose nature you asked me to determine. It did not cost me much trouble to find out the matter in question, I have done more difficult things twenty times, in the course of experiments relating to medical jurisprudence. You could have saved yourself the use of the established formula: "When you shall have made your microscopic examination, I will tell you what it is." These little tricks amount to nothing: my microscope knows better than you do what you have sent me. You know the form and color of things: _it_ sees their inmost nature, the laws of their being, the conditions of their life and death.
"Your fragment of desiccated matter, half as broad as my nail and nearly as thick, after remaining for twenty-four hours under a bell-glass in an atmosphere saturated with water at the temperature of the human body, became supple--so much so as to be a little elastic. I could consequently dissect it, study it like a piece of fresh flesh, and put under the microscope each one of its parts that appeared different, in consistency or color, from the rest.
"I at once found, in the middle, a slight portion harder and more elastic than the rest, which presented the texture and cellular structure of cartilage. This was neither the cartilage of the nose, nor the cartilage of an articulation, but certainly the fibro-cartilage of the ear. You sent me, then, the end of an ear, and it is not the lower end--the lobe which women pierce to put their gold ornaments in, but the upper end, into which the cartilage extends.
"On the inner-side, I took off a fine skin, in which the microscope showed me an epidermis, delicate, perfectly intact; a derma no less intact, with little papillae and, moreover, covered with a lot of fine human hairs. Each of these little hairs had its root imbedded in its follicle, and the follicle accompanied by its two little glands. I will tell you even more: these hairs of down were from four to five millimetres long, by from three to five hundredths of a millimetre in diameter; this is twice the size of the pretty down which grows on a feminine ear; from which I conclude that your piece of ear belongs to a man.
"Against the curved edge of the cartilage, I found delicate striated bunch
es of the muscle of the helix, and so perfectly intact that one would have said there was nothing to prevent their contracting. Under the skin and near the muscles, I found several little nervous filaments, each one composed of eight or ten tubes in which the medulla was as intact and homogeneous as in nerves removed from a living animal or taken from an amputated limb. Are you satisfied? Do you cry mercy? Well! As for me, I am not yet at the end of my string.
"In the cellular tissue interposed between the cartilage and the skin, I found little arteries and little veins whose structure was perfectly cognizable. They contained some serum with red blood globules. These globules were all of them circular, biconcave and perfectly regular; they showed neither indentations nor that raspberry-like appearance which characterizes the blood globules of a corpse.
"To sum up, my dear _confrere_, I have found in this fragment nearly everything that is found in the human body--cartilage, muscle, nerve, skin, hairs, glands, blood, etc., and all this in a perfectly healthy and normal state. It is not, then, a piece of a corpse which you sent me, but a piece of a living man, whose humors and tissues are in no way decomposed.
"With high consideration, yours,
"KARL NIBOR.
"PARIS, _July 30th, 1859._"