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
fiancée 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 _confrère_:
"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 papillæ 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 _confrère_, 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._"