The Man With The Broken Ear

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Having extended the body on the platform of the air-pump, lowered the
receiver and luted the rim, I undertook to submit it gradually to the
influence of a dry vacuum and cold. Capsules filled with chloride of
calcium were placed around the Colonel to absorb the water which should
evaporate from the body, and to promote the desiccation.

I certainly found myself in the best possible situation for subjecting
the human body to a process of gradual desiccation without sudden
interruption of the functions, or disorganization of the tissues or
fluids. Seldom had my experiments on rotifers and tardigrades been
surrounded with equal chances of success, yet they had always succeeded.
But the particular nature of the subject and the special scruples
imposed upon my conscience, obliged me to employ a certain number of new
conditions, which I had long since, in other connections, foreseen the
expediency of. I had taken the pains to arrange an opening at each end
of my oval receiver, and fit into it a heavy glass, which enabled me to
follow with my eye the effects of the vacuum on the Colonel. I was
entirely prevented from shutting the windows of my laboratory, from fear
that a too elevated temperature might put an end to the lethargy of the
subject, or induce some change in the fluids. If a thaw had come on, all
would have been over with my experiment. But the thermometer kept for
several days between six and eight degrees below zero, and I was very
happy in seeing the lethargic sleep continue, without having to fear
congelation of the tissues.

I commenced to produce the vacuum with extreme slowness, for fear that
the gases distributed through the blood, becoming free on account of the
difference of their tension from that of rarified air, might escape in
the vessels and so bring on immediate death. Moreover, I watched, every
moment, the effects of the vacuum on the intestinal gases, for by
expanding inside in proportion as the pressure of the air diminished
outside of the body, they could have caused serious disorders. The
tissues might not have been entirely ruptured by them, but an internal
lesion would have been enough to occasion death in a few hours after
reanimation. One observes this quite frequently in animals carelessly
desiccated.

Several times, too rapid a protrusion of the abdomen put me on my guard
against the danger which I feared, and I was obliged to let in a little
air under the receiver. At last, the cessation of all phenomena of this
kind satisfied me that the gases had disappeared by exosmose or had been
expelled by the spontaneous contraction of the viscera. It was not until
the end of the first day that I could give up these minute precautions,
and carry the vacuum a little further.

The next day, the 13th, I pushed the vacuum to a point where the
barometer fell to five millimetres. As no change had taken place in the
position of the body or limbs, I was sure that no convulsion had been
produced. The colonel had been desiccated, had become immobile, had lost
the power of performing the functions of life, without death having
supervened, and without the possibility of returning to activity having
departed. His life was suspended, not extinguished.

Each time that a surplus of watery vapor caused the barometer to ascend,
I pumped. On the 14th, the door of my laboratory was literally broken in
by the Russian General, Count Trollohub, who had been sent from
headquarters. This distinguished officer had run in all haste to
prevent the execution of the colonel and to conduct him into the
presence of the Commander in Chief. I loyally confessed to him what I
had done under the inspiration of my conscience; I showed him the body
through one of the bull's-eyes of the air-pump; I told him that I was
happy to have preserved a man who could furnish useful information to
the liberators of my country; and I offered to resuscitate him at my own
expense if they would promise me to respect his life and liberty. The
General, Count Trollohub, unquestionably a distinguished man, but one of
an exclusively military education, thought that I was not speaking
seriously. He went out slamming the door in my face, and treating me
like an old fool.

I set myself to pumping again, and kept the vacuum at a pressure of from
three to five millimetres for the space of three months. I knew by
experience that animals can revive after being submitted to a dry vacuum
and cold for eighty days.

On the 12th of February 1814, having observed that for a month no
modification had taken place in the shrinking of the flesh, I resolved
to submit the Colonel to another series of operations, in order to
insure more perfect preservation by complete desiccation. I let the air
re-enter by the stop-cock arranged for the purpose, and, after raising
the receiver, proceeded at once to my experiment.

The body did not weigh more than forty-six pounds; I had then reduced it
nearly to a third of its original weight. It should be borne in mind
that the clothing had not lost as much water as the other parts. Now the
human body contains nearly four-fifths of its own weight of water, as is
proved by a desiccation thoroughly made in a chemical drying furnace.

I accordingly placed the Colonel on a tray, and, after sliding it into
my great furnace, gradually raised the temperature to 75 degrees,
centigrade. I did not dare to go beyond this heat, from fear of altering
the albumen and rendering it insoluble, and also of taking away from the
tissues the capacity of reabsorbing the water necessary to a return to
their functions.

I had taken care to arrange a convenient apparatus so that the furnace
was constantly traversed by a current of dry air. This air was dried in
traversing a series of jars filled with sulphuric acid, quick-lime and
chloride of calcium.

After a week passed in the furnace, the general appearance of the body
had not changed, but its weight was reduced to forty pounds, clothing
included. Eight days more brought no new decrease of weight. From this,
I concluded that the desiccation was sufficient. I knew very well that
corpses mummified in church vaults for a century or more, end by
weighing no more than a half-score of pounds, but they do not become so
light without a material alteration in their tissues.

On the 27th of February, I myself placed the colonel in the boxes which
I had had made for his occupancy. Since that time, that is to say during
a space of nine years and eleven months, we have never been separated. I
carried him with me to Dantzic. He stays in my house. I have never
placed him, according to his number, in my zoological collection; he
remains by himself, in the chamber of honor. I do not grant any one the
pleasure of re-using his chloride of calcium. I will take care of you
till my dying day, Oh Colonel Fougas, dear and unfortunate friend! But I
shall not have the joy of witnessing your resurrection. I shall not
share the delightful emotions of the warrior returning to life. Your
lachrymal glands, inert to-day, but some day to be reanimated, will not
pour upon the bosom of your old benefactor, the sweet dew of
recognition. For you will not recover your life until a day when mine
will have long since departed! Perhaps you will be astonished that I,
loving you as I do, should have so long delayed to draw you out of this
profound slumber. Who knows but that some bitter reproach may come to
taint the tenderness of the first offices of gratitude that you will
perform over my tomb! Yes! I have prolonged, without any benefit to you,
an experiment of general interest to others. I ought to have remained
faithful to my first intention, and restored your life, immediately
after the signature of peace. But what! Was it well to send you back to
France when the sun of your fatherland was obscured by our soldiers and
allies? I have spared you that spectacle--one so grievous to such a
soul as yours. Without doubt you would have had, in March, 1815, the
consolation of again seeing that fatal man to whom you had consecrated
your devotion; but are you entirely sure that you would not have been
swallowed up with his fortune, in the shipwreck of Waterloo?

For five or six years past, it has not been your welfare nor even the
welfare of science, that prevented me from reanimating you, it has
been.... Forgive me, Colonel, it has been a cowardly attachment to life.
The disorder from which I am suffering, and which will soon carry me
off, is an aneurism of the heart; violent emotions are interdicted to
me. If I were myself to undertake the grand operation whose process I
have traced in a memorandum annexed to this instrument, I would, without
any doubt, succumb before finishing it; my death would be an untoward
accident which might trouble my assistants and cause your resuscitation
to fail.

Rest content! You will not have long to wait, and, moreover, what do you
lose by waiting? You do not grow old, you are always twenty-four years
of age; your children are growing up, you will be almost their
contemporary when you come to life again. You came to Liebenfeld poor,
you are now in my house poor, and my will makes you rich. That you may
be happy also, is my dearest wish.

I direct that, the day after my death, my nephew, Nicholas Meiser,
shall call together, by letter, the ten physicians most illustrious in
the kingdom of Prussia, that he shall read to them my will and the
annexed memorandum, and that he shall cause them to proceed without
delay, in my own laboratory, to the resuscitation of Colonel Fougas. The
expenses of travel, maintenance, etc., etc., shall be deducted from the
assets of my estate. The sum of two thousand thalers shall be devoted to
the publication of the glorious results of the experiment, in German,
French and Latin. A copy of this pamphlet shall be sent to each of the
learned societies then existing in Europe.

In the entirely unexpected event of the efforts of science being unable
to reanimate the Colonel, all my effects shall revert to Nicholas
Meiser, my sole surviving relative.

JOHN MEISER, M. D.

CHAPTER VIII.

HOW NICHOLAS MEISER, NEPHEW OF JOHN MEISER, EXECUTED HIS UNCLE'S WILL.

Doctor Hirtz of Berlin, who had copied this will himself, apologized
very politely for not having sent it sooner. Business had obliged him to
travel away from the Capital. In passing through Dantzic, he had given
himself the pleasure of visiting Herr Nicholas Meiser, the former
brewer, now a very wealthy land-owner and heavy holder of stocks,
sixty-six years of age. This old man very well remembered the death and
will of his uncle, the _savant_; but he did not speak of them without a
certain reluctance. Moreover, he said that immediately after the decease
of John Meiser, he had called together ten physicians of Dantzic around
the mummy of the Colonel; he showed also a unanimous statement of these
gentlemen, affirming that a man desiccated in a furnace cannot in any
way or by any means return to life. This certificate, drawn up by the
professional competitors and enemies of the deceased, made no mention of
the paper annexed to the will. Nicholas Meiser swore by all the Gods
(but not without visibly coloring) that this document concerning the
methods to be pursued in resuscitating the Colonel, had never been known
by himself or his wife. When interrogated regarding the reasons which
could have brought him to part with a trust as precious as the body of
M. Fougas, he said that he had kept it in his house fifteen years with
every imaginable respect and care, but that at the end of that time,
becoming beset with visions and being awakened almost every night by the
Colonel's ghost coming and pulling at his feet, he concluded to sell it
for twenty crowns to a Berlin amateur. Since he had been rid of this
dismal neighbor, he had slept a great deal better, but not entirely well
yet; for it had been impossible for him to forget the apparition of the
Colonel.

To these revelations, Herr Hirtz, physician to His Royal Highness the
Prince Regent of Prussia, added some remarks of his own. He did not
think that the resuscitation of a healthy man, desiccated with
precaution, was impossible in theory; he thought also, that the process
of desiccation indicated by the illustrious John Meiser was the best to
follow. But in the present case, it did not appear to him probable that
Colonel Fougas could be called back to life; the atmospheric influences
and the variations of temperature which he had undergone during a period
of forty six years, must have altered the fluids and the tissues.

This was also the opinion of M. Renault and his son. To quiet
Clementine's excitement a little, they read to her the concluding
paragraphs of Prof. Hirtz' letter. They kept from her John Meiser's
will, which could have done nothing but excite her. But the little
imagination worked on without cessation, do what they would to quiet it.
Clementine now sought the company of Doctor Martout, she held
discussions with him and wanted to see experiments in the resuscitation
of rotifers. When she got home again, she would think a little about
Leon and a great deal about the Colonel. The project of marriage was
still entertained, but no one ventured to speak about the publication of
the bans. To the most touching endearments of her betrothed, the young
fiancee responded with disquisitions on the vital principle. Her visits
to 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 served
only to throw her into a profound melancholy. Her beautiful complexion
grew pale, the brilliancy of her glance died away. Undermined by a
hidden disorder, she lost the amiable vivacity which had appeared to be
the sparkling of youth and joy. The change must have been very
noticeable, for even Mlle. Sambucco, who had not a mother's eyes, was
troubled about it.

M. Martout, satisfied that this malady of the spirit would not yield to
any but a moral treatment, came to see her one morning, and said:

"My dear child, although I cannot well explain to myself the great
interest that you take in this mummy, I have done something for it and
for you. I am going to send the little piece of ear that Leon broke off
to M. Karl Nibor."

Clementine opened all her eyes.

"Don't you understand me?" continued the Doctor. "The thing is, to find
out whether the humors and tissues of the Colonel have undergone
material alterations. M. Nibor, with his microscope, will tell us the
state of things. One can rely upon him: he is an infallible genius. His
answer will tell us if it be well to proceed to the resuscitation of our
man, or whether nothing is left but to bury him."

"What!" cried the young girl. "One can tell whether a man is dead or
living, 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 knows
absolutely nothing about the fragment I send him. But if, to suppose an
impossibility, he tells us that the piece of ear belongs to a sound
being, I will beg him to come to Fontainebleau and help us restore his
life."

This vague glimmer of hope dissipated Clementine's melancholy, and
brought back her buoyant health. She again began to sing and laugh and
flutter about the garden at her aunt's, and the house at M. Renault's.
The tender communings began again, the wedding was once more talked
over, 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 my
daughter-in-law so absorbed with that handsome dried-up fellow. What are
we to expect when she knows that it is impossible to bring him to life
again? Will the black butterflies[1] then fly away? And suppose they
happen, by a miracle, to reanimate him! are you sure she will not fall
in love with him? Indeed, Leon must have thought it very necessary to
buy this mummy, and I call it money well invested!"

One Sunday morning M. Martout rushed in upon the old professor, shouting
victory.

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 bunches 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._"

CHAPTER IX.

CONSIDERABLE OF A DISTURBANCE IN FONTAINEBLEAU.

It did not take long to get spread about the town that M. Martout and
the Messieurs Renault, intended, in conjunction with several Paris
_savans_, to resuscitate a dead man.

M. Martout had sent a detailed account of the case to the celebrated
Karl Nibor, who had hastened to lay it before the Biological Society. A
committee was forthwith appointed to accompany M. Nibor to
Fontainebleau. The six commissioners and the reporter agreed to leave
Paris the 15th of August,[2] being glad to escape the din of the public
rejoicings. M. Martout was notified to get things ready for the
experiment, which would probably last not less than three days.

Some of the Paris papers announced this great event among their
"Miscellaneous Items," but the public paid little attention to it. The
grand reception of the army returning from Italy engrossed everybody's
interest, and moreover, the French do not put more than moderate faith
in miracles promised in the newspapers.

But at Fontainebleau, it was an entirely different matter. Not only
Monsieur Martout and the Messieurs Renault, but M. Audret, the
architect, M. Bonnivet, the notary, and a dozen other of the bigwigs of
the town, had seen and touched the mummy of the Colonel. They had spoken
about it to their friends, had described it to the best of their
ability, and had recounted its history. Two or three copies of Herr
Meiser's will were circulating from hand to hand. The question of
reanimations was the order of the day; they discussed it around the
fish-pond, like the Academy of Sciences at a full meeting. Even in the
market-place you could have heard them talking about rotifers and
tardigrades.

It must be admitted that the resuscitationists were not in the majority.
A few professors of the college, noted for the paradoxical character of
their minds; a few lovers of the marvellous, who had been duly convicted
of table-tipping; and, to top off with a half dozen of those old
white-moustached grumblers who believe that the death of Napoleon I. is
a calumnious lie set afloat by the English, constituted the whole of the
army. M. Martout had against him not only the skeptics, but the
innumerable crowd of believers, in the bargain. One party turned him to
ridicule, the others proclaimed him revolutionary, dangerous, and an
enemy of the fundamental ideas on which society rests. The minister of
one little church preached, in inuendoes, against the Prometheuses who
aspired to usurp the prerogatives of Heaven. But the rector of the
parish did not hesitate to say, in five or six houses, that the cure of
a man as desperately sick as M. Fougas, would be an evidence of the
power and mercy of God.

The garrison of Fontainebleau was at that time composed of four
squadrons of cuirassiers and the 23d regiment of the line, which had
distinguished itself at Magenta. As soon as it was known in Colonel
Fougas' old regiment that that illustrious officer was possibly going to
return to the world, there was a general sensation. A regiment knows its
history, and the history of the 23d had been that of Fougas from
February, 1811, to November, 1813. All the soldiers had heard read, at
their messes, the following anecdote:

"On the 27th of August, 1813, at the battle of Dresden, the Emperor
noticed a French regiment at the foot of a Russian redoubt which was
pouring grape upon it. He asked what regiment it was, and was told that
it was the 23d of the line. 'That's impossible!' said he. 'The 23d of
the line never stood under fire without rushing upon the artillery
thundering at it.' At that moment the 23d, led by Colonel Fougas, rushed
up the height at double quick, pinned the artillerists to their guns,
and took the redoubt."

The officers and soldiers, justly proud of this memorable action,
venerated, under the name of Fougas, one of the fathers of the regiment.
The idea of seeing him appear in the midst of them, young and living,
did not appear likely, but it was already something to be in possession
of his body. Officers and soldiers decided that he should be interred at
their expense, after the experiments of Doctor Martout were completed.
And to give him a tomb worthy of his glory, they voted an assessment of
two days' pay.

Every one who wore an epaulette visited M. Renault's laboratory; the
Colonel of cuirassiers went there several times--in hopes of meeting
Clementine. But Leon's betrothed kept herself out of the way.

She was happier than any woman had ever been, this pretty little
Clementine. No cloud longer disturbed the serenity of her fair brow.
Free from all anxieties, with a heart opened to Hope, she adored her
dear Leon, and passed her days in telling him so. She herself had
pressed the publication of the bans.

"We will be married," said she, "the day after the resuscitation of the
Colonel. I intend that he shall give me away, I want him to bless me.
That is certainly the least he can do for me, after all I have done for
him. It is certain that, but for my opposition, you would have sent him
to the museum of the _Jardin des Plantes_. I will tell him all this,
Sir, as soon as he can understand us, and he will cut _your_ ears off,
in _his_ turn! I love you!"

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