The Man With The Broken Ear
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Edmond About >> The Man With The Broken Ear
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"One _will_ dream of it, nevertheless, and perhaps there is no man who
has not said to himself at least once in his life: 'If I could but come
to life again in a couple of centuries!' One would wish to return to
earth to seek news of his family; another, of his dynasty. A philosopher
is anxious to know if the ideas that he has planted will have borne
fruit; a politician, if his party will have obtained the upper hand; a
miser, if his heirs will not have dissipated the fortune he has made; a
mere land-holder, if the trees in his garden will have grown tall. No
one is indifferent to the future destinies of this world, which we
gallop through in a few years, never to return to it again. Who has not
envied the lot of Epimenides, who went to sleep in a cave, and, on
reopening his eyes, perceived that the world had grown old? Who has not
dreamed, on his own account, of the marvellous adventure of the sleeping
Beauty in the wood?
"Well, ladies, Professor Meiser, one of the least visionary men of the
age, was persuaded that science could put a living being to sleep and
wake him up again at the end of an infinite number of years--arrest all
the functions of the system, suspend life itself, protect an individual
against the action of time for a century or two, and afterwards
resuscitate him."
"He was a fool then!" cried Madame Renault.
"I wouldn't swear it. But he had his own ideas touching the main-spring
which moves a living organism. Do you remember, good mother mine, the
impression you experienced as a little girl, when some one first showed
you the inside of a watch in motion? You were satisfied that there was a
restless little animal inside the case, who worked twenty-four hours a
day at turning the hands. If the hands stopped going, you said: 'It is
because the little animal is dead.' Yet possibly he was only asleep.
"It has since been explained to you that a watch contains an assemblage
of parts well fitted to each other and kept well oiled, which, being
wound, can be considered to move spontaneously in a perfect
correspondence. If a spring become broken, if a bit of the wheel work be
injured, or if a grain of sand insinuate itself between two of the
parts, the watch stops, and the children say rightly: 'The little animal
is dead.' But suppose a sound watch, well made, right in every
particular, and stopped because the machinery would not run from lack of
oil; the little animal is not dead; nothing but a little oil is needed
to wake him up.
"Here is a first-rate chronometer, made in London. It runs fifteen days
without being wound. I gave it a turn of the key yesterday: it has,
then, thirteen days to run. If I throw it on the ground, or if I break
the main-spring, all is over. I will have killed the little animal. But
suppose that, without damaging anything, I find means to withdraw or dry
up the fine oil which now enables the parts to slip upon one another:
will the little animal be dead? No! It will be asleep. And the proof is
that I can lay my watch in a drawer, keep it there twenty-five years,
and if, after a quarter of a century, I put a drop of oil on it, the
parts will begin to move again. All that time would have passed without
waking up the little sleeping animal. It will still have thirteen days
to go, after the time when it starts again.
"All living beings, according to the opinion of Professor Meiser, are
watches, or organisms which move, breathe, nourish themselves, and
reproduce themselves as long as their organs are intact and properly
oiled. The oil of the watch is represented in the animal by an enormous
quantity of water. In man, for example, water provides about four-fifths
of the whole weight. Given--a colonel weighing a hundred and fifty
pounds, there are thirty pounds of colonel and a hundred and twenty
pounds, or about sixty quarts, of water. This is a fact proven by
numerous experiments. I say a colonel just as I would say a king; all
men are equal when submitted to analysis.
"Professor Meiser was satisfied, as are all physiologists, that to
break a colonel's head, or to make a hole in his heart, or to cut his
spinal column in two, is to kill the little animal; because the brain,
the heart, the spinal marrow are the indispensable springs, without
which the machine cannot go. But he thought too, that in removing sixty
quarts of water from a living person, one merely puts the little animal
to sleep without killing him--that a colonel carefully dried up, can
remain preserved a hundred years, and then return to life whenever any
one will replace in him the drop of oil, or rather the sixty quarts of
water, without which the human machine cannot begin moving again.
"This opinion, which may appear inadmissible to you and to me too, but
which is not absolutely rejected by our friend Doctor Martout, rests
upon a series of reliable observations which the merest tyro can verify
to-day. There _are_ animals which can be resuscitated: nothing is more
certain or better proven. Herr Meiser, like the Abbe Spallanzani and
many others, collected from the gutter of his roof some little dried
worms which were brittle as glass, and restored life to them by soaking
them in water. The capacity of thus returning to life, is not the
privilege of a single species: its existence has been satisfactorily
established in numerous and various animals. The genus Volvox--the
little worms or wormlets in vinegar, mud, spoiled paste, or grain-smut;
the Rotifera--a kind of little shell-fish protected by a carapace,
provided with a good digestive apparatus, of separate sexes, having a
nervous system with a distinct brain, having either one or two eyes,
according to the genus, a crystalline lens, and an optic nerve; the
Tardigrades--which are little spiders with six or eight legs, separate
sexes, regular digestive apparatus, a mouth, two eyes, a very well
defined nervous system, and a very well developed muscular system;--all
these die and revive ten or fifteen times consecutively, at the will of
the naturalist. One dries up a rotifer: good night to him; somebody
soaks him a little, and he wakes up to bid you good day. All depends
upon taking great care while he is dry. You understand that if any one
should merely break his head, no drop of water, nor river, nor ocean
could restore him.
"The marvellous thing is, that an animal which cannot live more than a
year, like the minute worm in grain-smut, can lie by twenty-four years
without dying, if one has taken the precaution of desiccating him.
"Needham collected a lot of them in 1743; he presented them to Martin
Folkes, who gave them to Baker, and these interesting creatures revived
in water in 1771. They enjoyed a rare satisfaction in elbowing their own
twenty-eighth generation. Wouldn't a man who should see his own
twenty-eighth generation be a happy grandfather?
"Another no less interesting fact is that desiccated animals have vastly
more tenacity of life than others. If the temperature were suddenly to
fall thirty degrees in this laboratory, we should all get inflammation
of the lungs. If it were to rise as much, there would be danger of
congestion of the brain. Well, a desiccated animal, which is not
absolutely dead, and which will revive to-morrow if I soak it, faces
with impunity, variations of ninety-five degrees and six-tenths. M.
Meiser and plenty of others have proved it.
"It remains to inquire, then, if a superior animal, a man for instance,
can be desiccated without any more disastrous consequences than a little
worm or a tardigrade. M. Meiser was convinced that it is practicable; he
wrote to that effect in all his books, although he did not demonstrate
it by experiment.
"Now where would be the harm in it, ladies? All men curious in regard to
the future, or dissatisfied with life, or out of sorts with their
contemporaries, could hold themselves in reserve for a better age, and
we should have no more suicides on account of misanthropy.
Valetudinarians, whom the ignorant science of the nineteenth century
declares incurable, needn't blow their brains out any more; they can
have themselves dried up and wait peaceably in a box until Medicine
shall have found a remedy for their disorders. Rejected lovers need no
longer throw themselves into the river; they can put themselves under
the receiver of an air pump, and make their appearance thirty years
later, young, handsome and triumphant, satirizing the age of their cruel
charmers, and paying them back scorn for scorn. Governments will give
up the unnatural and barbarous custom of guillotining dangerous people.
They will no longer shut them up in cramped cells at Mazas to complete
their brutishness; they will not send them to the Toulon school to
finish their criminal education; they will merely dry them up in
batches--one for ten years, another for forty, according to the gravity
of their deserts. A simple store-house will replace the prisons, police
lock-ups and jails. There will be no more escapes to fear, no more
prisoners to feed. An enormous quantity of dried beans and mouldy
potatoes will be saved for the consumption of the country.
"You have, ladies, a feeble delineation of the benefits which Doctor
Meiser hoped to pour upon Europe by introducing the desiccation of man.
He made his great experiment in 1813 on a French colonel--a prisoner, I
have been told, and condemned as a spy by court-martial. Unhappily he
did not succeed; for I bought the colonel and his box for the price of
an ordinary cavalry horse, in the dirtiest shop in Berlin."
CHAPTER IV.
THE VICTIM.
"My dear Leon," said M. Renault, "you remind me of a college
commencement. We have listened to your dissertation just as they listen
to the Latin discourse of the professor of rhetoric; there are always in
the audience a majority which learns nothing from it, and a minority
which understands nothing of it. But every body listens patiently, on
account of the sensations which are to come by and by. M. Martout and I
are acquainted with Meiser's works, and those of his distinguished
pupil, M. Pouchet; you have, then, said too much that is in them, if you
intended to speak for our benefit; and you have not said enough that is
in them for these ladies and gentlemen who know nothing of the existing
discussions regarding the vital and organic principles.
"Is life a principle of action which animates the organs and puts them
into play? Is it not, on the contrary, merely the result of
organization--the play of various functions of organized matter? This is
a problem of the highest importance, which would interest the ladies
themselves, if one were to place it plainly before them. It would be
sufficient to say: 'We inquire whether there is a vital principle--the
source of all functions of the body, or if life be not merely the result
of the regular play of the organs? The vital principle, in the eyes of
Meiser and his disciple, does not exist; if it really existed, they say,
one could not understand how it can leave a man and a tardigrade when
they are desiccated, and return to them again when they are soaked.'
Now, if there be no vital principle, all the metaphysical and moral
theories which have been hypothecated on its existence, must be
reconstructed. These ladies have listened to you patiently, it is but
justice to them to admit; but all that they have been able to gather
from your slightly Latinish discourse, is that you have given them a
dissertation instead of the romance you promised. But we all forgive you
for the sake of the mummy you are going to show us. Open the colonel's
box."
"We've well earned the sight!" cried Clementine, laughing.
"But suppose you were to get frightened?"
"I'd have you know, sir, that I'm not afraid of anybody, not even of
live colonels!"
Leon took his bunch of keys and opened the long oak box on which he had
been seated. The lid being raised, they saw a great leaden casket which
enclosed a magnificent walnut box carefully polished on the outside, and
lined on the inside with white silk, and padded. The others brought
their lamps and candles near, and the colonel of the 23d of the line
appeared as if he were in a chapel illuminated for his lying in state.
One would have said that the man was asleep. The perfect preservation of
the body attested the paternal care of the murderer. It was truly a
remarkable preparation, and would have borne comparison with the finest
European mummies described by Vicq d'Azyr in 1779, and by the younger
Puymaurin in 1787.
The part best preserved, as is always the case, was the face. All the
features had maintained a proud and manly expression. If any old friend
of the colonel had been present at the opening of the third box, he
would have recognized him at first sight.
Undoubtedly the point of the nose was a little sharper, the nostrils
less expanded and thinner, and the bridge a little more marked than in
the year 1813. The eyelids were thinned, the lips pinched, the corners
of the mouth drawn down, the cheek bones too prominent, and the neck
visibly shrunken, which exaggerated the prominence of the chin and
larynx. But the eyelids were closed without contraction, and the sockets
much less hollow than one could have expected; the mouth was not at all
distorted like the mouth of a corpse; the skin was slightly wrinkled but
had not changed color; it had only become a little more transparent,
showing, after a fashion, the color of the tendons, the fat and the
muscles, wherever it rested directly upon them. It also had a rosy tint
which is not ordinarily seen in embalmed corpses. Doctor Martout
explained this anomaly by saying that if the colonel had actually been
dried alive, the globules of the blood were not decomposed, but simply
collected in the capillary vessels of the skin and subjacent tissues
where they still preserved their proper color, and could be seen more
easily than otherwise, on account of the semi-transparency of the skin.
The uniform had become much too large, as may be readily understood;
though it did not seem, at a casual glance, that the members had become
deformed. The hands were dry and angular, but the nails, although a
little bent inward toward the root, had preserved all their freshness.
The only very noticeable change was the excessive depression of the
abdominal walls, which seemed crowded downward toward the posterior
side; at the right, a slight elevation indicated the place of the liver.
A tap of the finger on the various parts of the body, produced a sound
like that from dry leather. While Leon was pointing out these details to
his audience and doing the honors of his mummy he awkwardly broke off
the lower part of the right ear, and a little piece of the Colonel
remained in his hand.
This trifling accident might have passed unnoticed, had not Clementine,
who followed with visible emotion all the movements of her lover,
dropped her candle and uttered a cry of affright. All gathered around
her. Leon took her in his arms and carried her to a chair. M. Renault
ran after salts. She was as pale as death, and seemed on the point of
fainting.
She soon recovered, however, and reassured them all by a charming smile.
"Pardon me," she said, "for such a ridiculous exhibition of terror; but
what Monsieur Leon was saying to us ... and then ... that figure which
seemed sleeping ... it appeared to me that the poor man was going to
open his mouth and cry out when he was injured."
Leon hastened to close the walnut box, while M. Martout picked up the
piece of ear and put it in his pocket. But Clementine, while continuing
to smile and make apologies, was overcome by a fresh accession of
emotion and melted into tears. The engineer threw himself at her feet,
poured forth excuses and tender phrases, and did all he could to console
her inexplicable grief. Clementine dried her eyes, looked prettier than
ever, and sighed fit to break her heart, without knowing why.
"Beast that I am!" muttered Leon, tearing his hair. "On the day when I
see her again after three years' absence, I can think of nothing more
soul-inspiring than showing her mummies!" He launched a kick at the
triple coffin of the Colonel, saying: "I wish the devil had the
confounded Colonel!"
"No!" cried Clementine with redoubled energy and emotion. "Do not curse
him, Monsieur Leon! He has suffered so much! Ah! poor, poor unfortunate
man!"
Mlle. Sambucco felt a little ashamed. She made excuses for her niece,
and declared that never, since her tenderest childhood, had she
manifested such extreme sensitiveness. M. and Mme. Renault, who had seen
her grow up; Doctor Martout who had held the sinecure of physician to
her; the architect, the notary, in a word, everybody present was plunged
into a state of absolute stupefaction. Clementine was no sensitive
plant. She was not even a romantic school girl. Her youth had not been
nourished by Anne Radcliffe, she did not trouble herself about ghosts,
and she would go through the house very tranquilly at ten o'clock at
night without a candle. When her mother died, some months before Leon's
departure, she did not wish to have any one share with her the sad
satisfaction of watching and praying in the death-chamber.
"This will teach us," said the aunt, "how to stay up after ten o'clock.
What! It is midnight, all to quarter of an hour! Come, my child; you
will get better fast enough after you get to bed."
Clementine arose submissively, but at the moment of leaving the
laboratory she retraced her steps, and with a caprice more inexplicable
than her grief, she absolutely wished to see the mummy of the colonel
again. Her aunt scolded in vain; in spite of the remarks of Mlle.
Sambucco and all the persons present, she reopened the walnut box,
kneeled down beside the mummy and kissed it on the forehead.
"Poor man!" said she, rising, "How cold he is! Monsieur Leon, promise me
that if he is dead you will have him laid in consecrated ground!"
"As you please, Mademoiselle. I had intended to send him to the
anthropological museum, with my father's permission; but you know that
we can refuse you nothing."
They did not separate as gaily, by a good deal, as they had met. M.
Renault and his son escorted Mlle. Sambucco and her niece to their door,
and met the big colonel of cuirassiers who had been honoring Clementine
with his attentions. The young girl tenderly pressed the arm of her
betrothed and said: "Here is a man who never sees me without sighing.
And what sighs! Gracious Heavens! It wouldn't take more than two to fill
the sails of a a ship. The race of colonels has vastly degenerated since
1813. One doesn't see any more such fine looking ones as our unfortunate
friend."
Leon agreed with all she said. But he did not exactly see how he had
become the friend of a mummy for which he had just paid twenty-five
louis. To divert the conversation, he said to Clementine: "I have not
yet shown you all the nice things I brought. His majesty, the Emperor of
all the Russias, made me a present of a little enamelled gold star
hanging at the end of a ribbon. Do you like button-hole ribbons?"
"Oh, yes!" answered she, "the red ribbon of the Legion of Honor. Did you
notice? The poor colonel still has a shred of one on his uniform, but
the cross is there no longer. Those wicked Germans tore it away from him
when they took him prisoner!"
"It's very possible," said Leon.
When they reached Mlle. Sambucco's house, it was time to separate.
Clementine offered her hand to Leon, who would have been better pleased
with her cheek.
Father and son returned home arm in arm, with slow steps, giving
themselves up to endless conjectures regarding the whimsical emotions of
Clementine.
Mme. Renault was waiting to put her son to bed; a time-honored and
touching habit which mothers do not early lose. She showed him the
handsome apartment above the parlor and M. Renault's laboratory, which
had been prepared for his future domicile.
"You will be as snug in here as a little cock in a pie," said she,
showing him a bed-chamber fairly marvellous in its comfort. "All the
furniture is soft and rounded, without a single angle. A blind man could
walk here without any fear of hurting himself. See how I understand
domestic comfort! Why, each arm-chair can be a friend! This will cost
you a trifle. Penon Brothers came from Paris expressly. But a man ought
to be comfortable at home, so that he may have no temptation to go
abroad."
This sweet motherly prattle stretched itself over two good hours, and
much of it related to Clementine, as you will readily suppose. Leon had
found her prettier than he had dreamed her in his sweetest visions, but
less loving. "Devil take me!" said he, blowing out his candle; "One
might think that that confounded stuffed Colonel had come to thrust
himself between us."
CHAPTER V.
DREAMS OF LOVE, AND OTHER DREAMS.
Leon learned to his cost, that a good conscience and a good bed are not
enough to insure a good sleep. He was bedded like a sybarite, innocent
as an Arcadian shepherd, and, moreover, tired as a soldier after a
forced march; nevertheless a dull sleeplessness weighed upon him until
morning. In vain he tossed into every possible position, as if to shift
the burden from one shoulder on to the other. He did not close his eyes
until he had seen the first glimmering of dawn silver the chinks of his
shutters.
He lulled himself to sleep thinking of Clementine; an obliging dream
soon showed him the image of her he loved. He saw her in bridal costume,
in the chapel of the imperial chateau. She was leaning on the arm of the
elder M. Renault, who had put spurs on in honor of the ceremony. Leon
followed, having given his arm to Mlle. Sambucco; the ancient maiden was
decorated with the insignia of the Legion of Honor. On approaching the
altar, the bridegroom noticed that his father's legs were as thin as
broomsticks, and, when he was about expressing his astonishment, M.
Renault turned around and said to him: "They are thin because they are
desiccated; but they are not deformed." While he was giving this
explanation, his face altered, his features changed, he shot out a black
moustache, and grew terribly like the Colonel. The ceremony began. The
choir was filled with tardigrades and rotifers as large as men and
dressed like choristers: they intoned, in solemn measure, a hymn of the
German composer, Meiser, which began thus:
The vital principle
Is a gratuitous hypothesis!
The poetry and the music appeared admirable to Leon; he was trying to
impress them on his memory when the officiating priest advanced toward
him with two gold rings on a silver salver. This priest was a colonel of
cuirassiers in full uniform. Leon asked himself when and where he had
met him. It was on the previous evening before Clementine's door. The
cuirassier murmured these words: "The race of colonels has vastly
degenerated since 1813." He heaved a profound sigh, and the nave of the
chapel, which was a ship-of-the-line, was driven over the water at a
speed of forty knots. Leon tranquilly took the little gold ring and
prepared to place it on Clementine's finger, but he perceived that the
hand of his betrothed was dried up; the nails alone had retained their
natural freshness. He was frightened and fled across the church, which
he found filled with colonels of every age and variety. The crowd was
so dense that the most unheard-of efforts failed to penetrate it. He
escapes at last, but hears behind him the hurried steps of a man who
tries to catch him. He doubles his speed, he throws himself on
all-fours, he gallops, he neighs, the trees on the way seem to fly
behind him, he no longer touches the earth. But the enemy comes up
faster than the wind; Leon hears the sound of his steps, his spurs
jingle; he catches up with Leon, seizes him by the mane, flings himself
with a bound upon his back, and goads him with the spur. Leon rears; the
rider bends over toward his ear and says, stroking him with his whip: "I
am not heavy to carry:--thirty pounds of colonel." The unhappy lover of
Mlle. Clementine makes a violent effort and springs sideways; the
Colonel falls and draws his sword. Leon loses no time; he puts himself
on guard and fights, but almost instantly feels the Colonel's sword
enter his heart to the hilt. The chill of the blade spreads further and
further, and ends by freezing Leon from head to foot. The Colonel draws
nearer and says, smiling: "The main-spring is broken; the little animal
is dead." He puts the body in the walnut box, which is too short and too
narrow. Cramped on every side, Leon struggles, strains and wakes himself
up, worn out with fatigue and half smothered between the bed and the
wall.
He quickly jumped into his slippers and eagerly raised the windows and
pushed open the shutters. "He made light, and saw that it was good," as
is elsewhere written. * * * * * * * * * * * * * * Brrroum! He shook off
the recollections of his dream as a wet dog shakes off drops of water.
The famous London chronometer told him that it was nine o'clock. A cup
of chocolate, served by Gothon, helped not a little to untangle his
ideas. On proceeding with his toilet, in a very bright, cheerful and
convenient dressing-room, he reconciled himself to the realities of
life. "Everything considered," he said to himself, combing out his
yellow beard, "nothing but happiness has come to me. Here I am in my
native country, with my family and in a pretty house which is our own.
My father and mother are both well, and, for myself, I revel in the most
luxuriant health. Our fortune is moderate, but so are our tastes, and we
shall never feel the want of anything. Our friends received me yesterday
with open arms; and as for enemies we have none. The prettiest girl in
Fontainebleau is willing to become my wife; I can marry her in less than
three weeks if I see fit to hurry things a little. Clementine did not
meet me as if I were of no interest to her; far from it. Her lovely eyes
smiled upon me last night with the most tender regard. It is true that
she wept at the end, that's too certain. That is my only vexation, my
only anxiety, the sole cause of that foolish dream I had last night. She
did weep, but why? Because I was beast enough to regale her with a
lecture, and that, too, about a mummy. All right! I'll have the mummy
buried; I'll hold back my dissertations, and nothing else in the world
will come to disturb our happiness."
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