The Man With The Broken Ear | Page 6

a copy of a very curious memoir on the same subject. Don't
go yet, my dear Mademoiselle Sambucco; I have a little military and
scientific romance for you. We will look at the mummy as soon as I
have acquainted you with his misfortunes."
"Aha!" cried M. Audret, the architect of the chateau, "it's the romance
of the mummy, is it, that you're going to tell us? Too late my poor Leon!
Theophile Gautier has gotten ahead of you, in the supplement to the
Moniteur, and all the world knows your Egyptian history."
"My history," said Leon, "is no more Egyptian than Manon Lescault.
Our excellent doctor Martout, here, ought to know the name of
professor John Meiser, of Dantzic; he lived at the beginning of this
century, and I think that his last work appeared in 1824 or 1825."
"In 1823," replied M. Martout. "Meiser is one of the scientific men who
have done Germany most honor. In the midst of terrible wars which

drenched his country in blood, he followed up the researches of
Leeuwenkoeck, Baker, Needham, Fontana, and Spallanzani, on the
revivification of animals. Our profession honors in him, one of the
fathers of modern biology."
"Heavens! What ugly big words!" cried Mlle. Sambucco. "Is it decent
to keep people till this time of night, to make them listen to Dutch."
"Don't listen to the big words, dear little auntey. Save yourself for the
romance, since there is one."
"A terrible one!" said Leon. "Mlle. Clementine is seated over a human
victim, sacrificed to science by professor Meiser."
Clementine instantly got up. Her fiancé handed her a chair, and seated
himself in the place she had just left. The listeners, fearing that Leon's
romance might be in several volumes, took their places around him,
some on boxes, some on chairs.
CHAPTER III.
THE CRIME OF THE LEARNED PROFESSOR MEISER.
"Ladies," said Leon, "Professor Meiser was no vulgar malefactor, but a
man devoted to science and humanity. If he killed the French colonel
who at this moment reposes beneath my coat tails, it was for the sake of
saving his life, as well as of throwing light on a question of the deepest
interest, even to each one of you.
"The duration of our existence is very much too brief. That is a fact
which no man can contradict. We know that in a hundred years, not one
of the nine or ten persons assembled in this house will be living on the
face of the earth. Is not this a deplorable fact?"
Mlle. Sambucco heaved a heavy sigh, and Leon continued:
"Alas! Mademoiselle, like you I have sighed many a time at the
contemplation of this dire necessity. You have a niece, the most

beautiful and the most adorable of all nieces, and the sight of her
charming face gladdens your heart. But you yearn for something more;
you will not be satisfied until you have seen your little grand nephews
trotting around. You will see them I earnestly believe. But will you see
their children? It is doubtful. Their grandchildren? Impossible! In
regard to the tenth, twentieth, thirtieth generation, it is useless even to
dream.
"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,