The Man With The Broken Ear | Page 6

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 fianc�� 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, 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