The Man With The Broken Ear

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He went down stairs, humming an air from the _Nozze_. M. and Mme.
Renault, who were not accustomed to going to bed after midnight, were
still asleep. On going into the laboratory, he saw that the triple box
of the Colonel was closed. Gothon had placed a little wooden cross and a
sprig of consecrated box on the cover. "We may as well begin masses for
his soul," he murmured between his teeth, with a smile that might have
been a little sceptical. At the same time he noticed that Clementine, in
her agitation, had forgotten the presents he had brought her. He made a
bundle of them, looked at his watch, and concluded that there would be
no indiscretion in straining a point to go to Mlle. Sambucco's.

The much-to-be-respected aunt was an early riser, as they generally are
in the rural districts, and had, in fact, already gone out to church,
and Clementine was gardening near the house. She ran to her lover
without thinking of throwing down the little rake she held in her hand,
and with the sweetest smile in the world, held up her pretty rosy cheeks
which were a little moist and flushed by the pleasant warmth of pleasure
and exercise.

"Aren't you put out with me?" said she. "I was very ridiculous last
night. My aunt has scolded me in the bargain. And I forgot to take the
pretty things you brought me from among the savages! But it was not
from lack of appreciation. I am so happy to see that you have always
thought of me as I have thought of you! I could have sent for them
to-day, but I am pleasantly anticipated. My heart told me that you would
come yourself."

"Your heart knew me, dear Clementine."

"It would be very unfortunate if it did not know its owner."

"How good you are, and how much I love you!"

"Oh! I, too, dear Leon, I love you dearly."

She stood the rake against a tree, and hung upon the arm of her intended
husband with that supple and languishing grace, the secret of which the
creoles possess.

"Come this way," said she, "so that I can show you all the improvements
we have made in the garden."

Leon admired everything she wanted him to. The fact is that he had eyes
for nothing but her. The grotto of Polyphemus and the cave of Caecus
would have appeared to him pleasanter than the gardens of Armida, if
Clementine's little red jacket had been promenading in them.

He asked her if she did not feel some regret in leaving so charming a
retreat, and one which she had embellished with so much care.

"Why?" asked she, without thinking to blush. "We will not go far off,
and, besides, won't we come here every day?"

The coming marriage was a thing so well settled, that it had not even
been spoken of on the previous evening. Nothing remained to be done but
to publish the bans and fix the date. Clementine, simple and honest
heart, expressed herself without any false modesty concerning an event
so entirely expected, so natural and so agreeable. She had expressed her
tastes to Mme. Renault in the arrangement of the new apartments, and
chosen the hangings herself; and she no longer made any ceremony in
talking with her intended of the happy life in common which was about
beginning for them, of the people they would invite to the marriage
ceremony, of the wedding calls to be made afterwards, of the day which
should be appropriated for receptions and of the time they would devote
to each other's society and to work. She inquired in regard to the
occupation which Leon intended to make for himself, and the hours which,
of preference, he would give to study. This excellent little woman would
have been ashamed to bear the name of a sloth, and unhappy in passing
her days with an idler. She promised Leon in advance, to respect his
work as a sacred thing. On her part she thoroughly intended to make her
time also of use, and not to live with folded arms. At the start she
would take charge of the housekeeping, under the direction of Madame
Renault, who was beginning to find it a little burdensome. And then
would she not soon have children to care for, bring up and educate? This
was a noble and useful pleasure which she did not intend to share with
any one. Nevertheless she would send her sons to college, in order to
fit them for living in the world, and to teach them early those
principles of justice and equality which are the foundation of every
good manly character. Leon let her talk on, only interrupting her to
agree with her: for these two young people who had been educated and
brought up with the same ideas, saw everything with the same eyes.
Education had created this pleasant harmony rather than Love.

"Do you know," said Clementine, "that I felt an awful palpitation of the
heart when I entered the room where you were yesterday?"

"If you think that my heart beat less violently than yours--"

"Oh! but it was a different thing with me: I was afraid."

"What of?"

"I was afraid that I should not find you the same as I had seen you in
my thoughts. Remember that it had been three years since we bid each
other good bye. I remembered distinctly what you were when you went
away, and, with imagination helping memory a little, I had reconstructed
my Leon entire. But if you had no longer resembled him! What would have
become of me in the presence of a new Leon, when I had formed the
pleasant habit of loving the other?"

"You make me tremble. But your first greeting reassured me in advance."

"Tut, sir! Don't speak of that first greeting, or you will make me blush
a second time. Let us speak rather of that poor colonel who made me shed
so many tears. How is he getting along this morning?"

"I forgot to inquire after his health, but if you want me to--"

"It's useless. You can announce to him a visit from me to-day. It is
absolutely necessary that I should see him this noon."

"You would be very sensible to give up this fancy. Why expose yourself
again to such painful emotions?"

"The fancy is stronger than I am. Seriously, dear Leon, the old fellow
attracts me."

"Why 'old fellow?' He has the appearance of a man who died when from
twenty-five to thirty years of age."

"Are you very sure that he is dead? I said 'old fellow' because of a
dream I had last night."

"Ha! You too?"

"Yes. You remember how agitated I was on leaving you, and, moreover, I
had been scolded by my aunt. And, too, I had been thinking of terrible
sights--my poor mother lying on her death-bed. In fact, my spirits were
quite broken down."

"Poor dear little heart!"

"Nevertheless, as I did not want to think about anything any more, I
went to bed quickly, and shut my eyes with all my might, so tightly,
indeed, that I put myself to sleep. It was not long before I saw the
colonel. He was lying as I saw him in his triple coffin, but he had long
white hair and a most benign and venerable appearance. He begged us to
put him in consecrated ground, and we carried him, you and I, to the
Fontainebleau cemetery. On reaching my mother's tomb we saw that the
stone was displaced. My mother, in a white robe, was moved so as to make
a place beside her, and she seemed waiting for the colonel. But every
time we attempted to lay him down, the coffin left our hands and rested
suspended in the air, as if it had no weight. I could distinguish the
poor old man's features, for his triple coffin had become as transparent
as the alabaster lamp burning near the ceiling of my chamber. He was
sad, and his broken ear bled freely. All at once he escaped from our
hands, the coffin vanished, and I saw nothing but him, pale as a statue,
and tall as the tallest oaks of the _bas-Breau_. His golden epaulettes
spread out and became wings, and he raised himself to heaven, holding
over us both hands as if in blessing. I woke up all in tears, but I have
not told my dream to my aunt, for she would have scolded me again."

"No one ought to be scolded but me, Clementine dear. It is my fault that
your gentle slumbers are troubled by visions of the other world. But all
this will be stopped soon: to-day I am going to seek a definite
receptacle for the Colonel."

CHAPTER VI.

A YOUNG GIRL'S CAPRICE.

Clementine had a fresh young heart. Before knowing Leon, she had loved
but one person--her mother. No cousins of either sex, nor uncles, nor
aunts, nor grandfathers, nor grandmothers, had dissipated, by dividing
it among themselves, that little treasure of affection which
well-constituted children bring into the world. The grandmother,
Clementine Pichon, was married at Nancy in January, 1814, and died three
months later in the suburbs of Toulon, during her first confinement. The
grandfather, M. Langevin, a sub-commissary of the first class, being
left a widower, with a daughter in the cradle, devoted himself to
bringing up his child. He gave her, in 1835, to M. Sambucco, an
estimable and agreeable man, of Italian extraction, born in France, and
King's counsel in the court of Marseilles. In 1838 M. Sambucco, who was
a man of considerable independence, because he had resources of his own,
in some manner highly honorable to himself, incurred the ill-will of the
Keeper of the Seals. He was therefore appointed Advocate-General to
Martinique, and after some days of hesitation, accepted the transfer to
that remote situation. But old M. Langevin did not easily console
himself for the departure of his daughter: he died two years later
without having embraced the little Clementine, to whom it was intended
that he should be godfather. M. Sambucco, his son-in-law, lost his life
in 1843, during an earthquake. The papers of the colony and of the
metropolis related at the time how he had fallen a victim to his
devotion to others. After this fearful misfortune, the young widow
hastened to recross the sea with her daughter. She settled in
Fontainebleau, in order that the child might live in a healthy
atmosphere. Fontainebleau is one of the healthiest places in France. If
Mme. Sambucco had been as good a manager as she was mother, she would
have left Clementine a respectable fortune, but she regulated her
affairs badly and got herself under heavy embarrassments. A neighboring
notary relieved her of a round sum; and two farms which she had paid
dearly for, brought her almost nothing. In short, she no longer knew
what her situation was, and began to lose all control of it, when a
sister of her husband, an old maid, pinched and pious, expressed a
desire to live with her and use their resources in common. The arrival
of this long-toothed spinster strangely frightened the little
Clementine, who hid herself under the furniture and nestled among her
mother's skirts; but it was the salvation of the house. Mlle. Sambucco
was not one of the most spirituelle nor one of the most romantic of
women, but she was Order incarnated. She reduced the expenses, handled
the resources herself, sold the two farms in 1847, bought some
three-per-cents. in 1848, and restored stable equilibrium in the budget.
Thanks to the talents and activity of this female steward, the gentle
and improvident widow had nothing to do but to fondle her child.
Clementine learned to honor the virtues of her aunt, but she adored her
mother. When she had the affliction of losing her, she found herself
alone in the world, leaning on Mlle. Sambucco, like a young plant on a
prop of dry wood. It was then that her friendship for Leon glimmered
with a vague ray of love; and young Renault profited by the necessity
for expansion which filled this youthful soul.

During the three long years that Leon spent away from her, Clementine
scarcely knew that she was alone. She loved and felt that she was loved
in return; she had faith in the future, and an inner life of tenderness
and timid hope; and this noble and gentle heart required nothing more.

But what completely astonished her betrothed, her aunt and herself, and
strangely subverted all the best accredited theories respecting the
feminine heart,--what, indeed, reason would have refused to credit had
it not been established by facts, was that the day when she again met
the husband of her choice, an hour after she had thrown herself into
Leon's arms with a grace so full of trust, Clementine was so abruptly
invaded by a new sentiment which was not love, nor friendship, nor fear,
but transcended them all and spoke with master tones in her heart.

From the instant when Leon had shown her the figure of the Colonel, she
had been seized by an actual passion for this nameless mummy. It was
nothing like what she felt towards young Renault, but it was a
combination of interest, compassion and respectful sympathy.

If any one had recounted some famous feat of arms, or some romantic
history of which the Colonel had been the hero, this impression would
have been natural, or, at least, explicable. But she knew nothing of him
except that he had been condemned as a spy by a council of war, and yet
she dreamed of him the very night after Leon's return.

This inexplicable prepossession at first manifested itself in a
religious form. She caused a mass to be said for the repose of the
Colonel's soul, and urged Leon to make preparations for the funeral,
herself selecting the ground in which he was to be interred. These
various cares never caused her to omit her daily visit to the walnut
box, or the respectful bending of the knee before the body, or the
sisterly or filial kiss which she regularly placed upon its forehead.
The Renault family soon became uneasy about such strange symptoms, and
hastened the interment of the attractive unknown, in order to relieve
themselves of him as soon as possible. But the day before the one fixed
for the ceremony, Clementine changed her mind.

"By what right could they shut in the tomb a man who, possibly, was not
dead? The theories of the learned Doctor Meiser were not such that one
could reject them without examination. The matter was at least worthy of
a few days' reflection. Was it not possible to submit the Colonel's body
to some experiments? Professor Hirtz, of Berlin, had promised to send
some valuable documents concerning the life and death of this
unfortunate officer: nothing ought to be undertaken before they were
received; some one ought to write to Berlin to hasten the sending of
these papers."

Leon sighed, but yielded uncomplainingly to this new caprice, and wrote
to M. Hirtz.

Clementine found an ally in this second campaign in Doctor Martout.
Though he was but an average practitioner and disdained the acquisition
of practice far too much, M. Martout was not deficient in knowledge. He
had long been studying five or six great questions in physiology, such
as reanimation, spontaneous generation and the topics connected with
them. A regular correspondence kept him posted in all recent
discoveries; he was the friend of M. Pouchet, of Rouen; and knew also
the celebrated Karl Nibor, who has carried the use of the microscope
into researches so wide and so profound. M. Martout had desiccated and
resuscitated thousands of little worms, rotifers and tardigrades; he
held that life is nothing but organization in action, and that the idea
of reviving a desiccated man has nothing absurd about it. He gave
himself up to long meditations when Professor Hirtz sent from Berlin the
following document, the original of which is filed among the manuscripts
of the Humboldt collection.

CHAPTER VII.

PROFESSOR MEISER'S WILL IN FAVOR OF THE DESICCATED COLONEL.

On this 20th day of January, 1824, being worn down by a cruel malady and
feeling the approach of the time when my person shall be absorbed in the
Great All;

I have written with my own hand this testament which is the expression
of my last will.

I appoint as executor my nephew Nicholas Meiser, a wealthy brewer in the
city of Dantzic.

I bequeath my books, papers and scientific collections of all kinds,
except item 3712, to my very estimable and learned friend, Herr Von
Humboldt.

I bequeath all the rest of my effects, real and personal, valued at
100,000 Prussian thalers or 375,000 francs, to Colonel Pierre Victor
Fougas, at present desiccated, but living, and entered in my catalogue
opposite No. 3712 (Zoology).

I trust that he will accept this feeble compensation for the ordeals he
has undergone in my laboratory, and the service he has rendered to
science.

Finally, in order that my nephew Nicholas Meiser may exactly understand
the duties I leave him to perform, I have resolved to inscribe here a
detailed account of the desiccation of Colonel Fougas, my sole heir.

It was on the 11th of November in that unhappy year 1813, that my
relations with this brave young man began. I had long since quitted
Dantzic, where the noise of cannon and the danger from bombs had
rendered all labor impossible, and retired with my instruments and books
under the protection of the Allied Armies in the fortified town of
Liebenfeld. The French garrisons of Dantzic, Stettin, Custrin, Glogau,
Hamburg and several other German towns could not communicate with each
other or with their native land; meanwhile General Rapp was obstinately
defending himself against the English fleet and the Russian army.
Colonel Fougas was taken by a detachment of the Barclay de Tolly corps,
as he was trying to pass the Vistula on the ice, on the way to Dantzic.
They brought him prisoner to Liebenfeld on the 11th of November, just at
my supper time, and Sergeant Garok, who commanded in the village, forced
me to be present at the examination and act as interpreter.

The open countenance, manly voice, proud firmness and fine carriage of
the unfortunate young man won my heart. He had made the sacrifice of his
life. His only regret, he said, was having stranded so near port, after
passing through four armies; and being unable to carry out the Emperor's
orders. He appeared animated by that French fanaticism which has done
so much harm to our beloved Germany. Nevertheless I could not help
defending him; and I translated his words less as an interpreter than as
an advocate. Unhappily, they found upon him a letter from Napoleon to
General Rapp, of which I preserved a copy:

"Abandon Dantzic, break the blockade, unite with the
garrisons of Stettin, Custrin and Glogau, march along
the Elbe, arrange with St. Cyr and Davoust to
concentrate the forces scattered at Dresden, Forgau,
Wittenberg, Magdeburg and Hamburg; roll up an army like
a snow ball; cross Westphalia, which is open, and come
to defend the line of the Rhine with an army of 170,000
Frenchmen which you will have saved!

"NAPOLEON."

This letter was sent to the headquarters of the Russian army, whilst a
half-dozen illiterate soldiers, drunk with joy and bad brandy, condemned
the brave Colonel of the 23d of the line to the death of a spy and a
traitor. The execution was fixed for the next day, the 12th, and M.
Pierre Victor Fougas, after having thanked and embraced me with the most
touching sensibility, (He is a husband and a father.) was shut up in the
little battlemented tower of Liebenfeld, where the wind whistles
terribly through all the loopholes.

The night of the 11th and 12th of November was one of the severest of
that terrible winter. My self-registering thermometer, which hung
outside my window with a southeast exposure, marked nineteen degrees
below zero, centigrade. I went early in the morning to bid the Colonel a
last farewell, and met Sergeant Garok, who said to me in bad German:

"We won't have to kill the Frantzouski, he is frozen to death."

I ran to the prison. The colonel was lying on his back, rigid. But I
found after a few minutes' examination, that the rigidity of the body
was not that of death. The joints, though they had not their ordinary
suppleness, could be bent and extended without any great effort. The
limbs, the face, and the chest gave my hands a sensation of cold, but
very different from that which I had often experienced from contact with
corpses.

Knowing that he had passed several nights without sleep, and endured
extraordinary fatigues, I did not doubt that he had fallen into that
profound and lethargic sleep which is superinduced by intense cold, and
which if too far prolonged slackens respiration and circulation to a
point where the most delicate physiological tests are necessary to
discover the continuance of life. The pulse was insensible; at least my
fingers, benumbed with cold, could not feel it. My hardness of hearing
(I was then in my sixty-ninth year) prevented my determining by
auscultation whether the beats of the heart still aroused those feeble
though prolonged vibrations which the ear continues to hear some time
after the hand fails to detect them.

The colonel had reached that point of torpor produced by cold, where to
revive a man without causing him to die, requires numerous and delicate
attentions. Some hours after, congelation would supervene, and with it,
impossibility of restoration to life.

I was in the greatest perplexity. On the one hand I knew that he was
dying on my hands by congelation; on the other, I could not, by myself,
bestow upon him the attentions that were indispensable. If I were to
administer stimulants without having him, at the same time, rubbed on
the trunk and limbs by three or four vigorous assistants, I would revive
him only to see him die. I had still before my eyes the spectacle of
that lovely young girl asphyxiated in a fire, whom I succeeded in
reviving by placing burning coals under the clavicles, but who could
only call her mother, and died almost immediately, in spite of the
administration of internal stimulants and electricity for inducing
contractions of the diaphragm and heart.

And even if I should succeed in bringing him back to health and
strength, was not he condemned by court-martial? Did not humanity forbid
my rousing him from this repose akin to death, to deliver him to the
horrors of execution?

I must confess that in the presence of this organism where life was
suspended, my ideas on reanimation took, as it were, fresh hold upon me.
I had so often desiccated and revived beings quite elevated in the
animal scale, that I did not doubt the success of the operation, even on
a man. By myself alone I could not revive and save the Colonel; but I
had in my laboratory, all the instruments necessary to desiccate him
without assistance.

To sum up, three alternatives offered themselves to me. I. To leave the
Colonel in the crenellated tower, where he would have died the same day
of congelation. II. To revive him by stimulants, at the risk of killing
him. And for what? To give him up, in case of success, to inevitable
execution. III. To desiccate him in my laboratory with the quasi
certainty of resuscitating him after the restoration of peace. All
friends of humanity will doubtless comprehend that I could not hesitate
long.

I had Sergeant Garok called, and I begged him to sell me the body of the
Colonel. It was not the first time that I had bought a corpse for
dissection, so my request excited no suspicion. The bargain concluded, I
gave him four bottles of kirsch-wasser, and soon two Russian soldiers
brought me Colonel Fougas on a stretcher.

As soon as I was alone with him, I pricked one of his fingers: pressure
forced out a drop of blood. To place it under a microscope between two
plates of glass was the work of a minute. Oh, joy! The fibrin was not
coagulated. The red globules appeared cleanly circular, flattened,
biconcave, and without notches, indentations or spheroidal swellings.
The white globules changed their shape, taking at intervals the
spherical form, and varying their shapes again by delicate expansions. I
was not deceived then, it was a torpid man that I had under my eyes, and
not a dead one!

I placed him on a pair of scales. He weighed one hundred and forty
pounds, clothing included. I did not care to undress him, for I had
noticed that animals desiccated directly in contact with the air, died
oftener than those which remained covered with moss and other soft
materials, during the ordeal of desiccation.

My great air-pump, with its immense platform, its enormous oval
wrought-iron receiver, which a rope running on a pulley firmly fixed in
the ceiling easily raised and lowered by means of a windlass--all these
thousand and one contrivances which I had so laboriously prepared in
spite of the railleries of those who envied me, and which I felt
desolate at seeing unemployed, were going to find their use! Unexpected
circumstances had arisen at last to procure me such a subject for
experiment, as I had in vain endeavored to procure, while I was
attempting to reduce to torpidity dogs, rabbits, sheep and other mammals
by the aid of freezing mixtures. Long ago, without doubt, would these
results have been attained if I had been aided by those who surrounded
me, instead of being made the butt of their railleries; if our
authorities had sustained me with their influence instead of treating me
as a subversive spirit.

I shut myself up _tete-a-tete_ with the Colonel, and took care that even
old Getchen, my housekeeper, now deceased, should not trouble me during
my work. I had substituted for the wearisome lever of the old fashioned
air-pumps, a wheel arranged with an eccentric which transformed the
circular movement of the axis into the rectilinear movement required by
the pistons: the wheel, the eccentric, the connecting rod, and the
joints of the apparatus all worked admirably, and enabled me to do
everything by myself. The cold did not impede the play of the machine,
and the lubricating oil was not gummed: I had refined it myself by a new
process founded on the then recent discoveries of the French _savant_ M.
Chevreul.

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