HALLELUJAH!
M. Nibor and his colleagues, after the usual compliments, requested to
see the subject. They had no time to lose, as the experiment could
hardly last less than three days. Leon hastened to conduct them to the
laboratory and to open the three boxes containing the Colonel.
They found that the patient presented quite a favorable appearance. M.
Nibor took off his clothes, which tore like tinder from having been too
much dried in Father Meiser's furnace. The body, when naked, was
pronounced entirely free from blemish and in a perfectly healthy
condition. No one would yet have guaranteed success, but every one was
full of hope.
After this preliminary examination, M. Renault put his laboratory at the
service of his guests. He offered them all that he possessed, with a
munificence which was not entirely free from vanity. In case the
employment of electricity should appear necessary, he had a powerful
battery of Leyden jars and forty of Bunsen's elements, which were
entirely new. M. Nibor thanked him smilingly.
"Save your riches," said he. "With a bath-tub and caldron of boiling
water, we will have everything we need. The Colonel needs nothing but
humidity. The thing is to give him the quantity of water necessary to
the play of the organs. If you have a small room where one can introduce
a jet of vapor, we will be more than content."
M. Audret, the architect, had very wisely built a little bath-room near
the laboratory, which was convenient and well lighted. The celebrated
steam engine was not far off, and its boiler had not, up to this time,
answered any other purpose than that of warming the baths of M. and Mme.
Renault.
The Colonel was carried into this room, with all the care necessitated
by his fragility. It was not intended to break his second ear in the
hurry of moving. Leon ran to light the fire under the boiler, and M.
Nibor created him Fireman, on the field of battle.
Soon a jet of tepid vapor streamed into the bath-room, creating around
the Colonel a humid atmosphere which was elevated by degrees, and
without any sudden increase, to the temperature of the human body. These
conditions of heat and humidity were maintained with the greatest care
for twenty-four hours. No one in the house went to sleep. The members of
the Parisian Committee encamped in the laboratory. Leon kept up the
fire; M. Nibor, M. Renault and M. Martout took turns in watching the
thermometer. Madame Renault was making tea and coffee, and punch too.
Gothon, who had taken communion in the morning, kept praying to God, in
the corner of her kitchen, that this impious miracle might not succeed.
A certain excitement already prevailed throughout the town, but one did
not know whether it should be attributed to the _fête_ of the 15th, or
the famous undertaking of the seven wise men of Paris.
By two o'clock on the 16th, encouraging results were obtained. The skin
and muscles had recovered nearly all their suppleness, but the joints
were still hard to bend. The collapsed condition of the walls of the
abdomen and the interval between the ribs, still indicated that the
viscera were far from having reabsorbed the quantity of water which they
had previously lost with Herr Meiser. A bath was prepared and kept at a
temperature of thirty-seven degrees and a half.[3] They left the Colonel
in it two hours and a half, taking care to frequently pass over his head
a fine sponge soaked with water.
M. Nibor removed him from the bath as soon as the skin, which was filled
out sooner than the other tissues, began to assume a whitish tinge and
wrinkle slightly. They kept him until the evening of the 16th in this
humid room, where they arranged an apparatus which, from time to time,
occasioned a fine rain of a temperature of thirty-seven and a half
degrees. A new bath was given in the evening. During the night, the
body was enveloped in flannel, but kept constantly in the same steaming
atmosphere.
On the morning of the 17th, after a third bath of an hour and a half,
the general characteristics of the figure and the proportions of the
body presented their natural aspect: one would have called it a sleeping
man. Five or six curious persons were admitted to see it, among others
the colonel of the 23d. In the presence of these witnesses, M. Nibor
moved successively all the joints, and demonstrated that they had
recovered their flexibility. He gently kneaded the limbs, trunk and
abdomen. He partly opened the lips, and separated the jaws, which were
quite firmly closed, and saw that the tongue had returned to its
ordinary size and consistency. He also partly opened the eyelids: the
eye-balls were firm and bright.
"Gentlemen," said the philosopher, "these are indications which do not
deceive; I prophesy success. In a few hours you shall witness the first
manifestations of life."
"But," interrupted one of the bystanders, "why not immediately?"
"Because the _conjunctivæ_ are still a little paler than they ought to
be. But the little veins traversing the whites of the eyes have already
assumed a very encouraging appearance. The blood is almost entirely
restored. What is the blood? Red globules floating in serum, or a sort
of whey. The serum in poor Fougas was dried up in his veins; the water
which we have gradually introduced by a slow endosmose has saturated the
albumen and fibrin of the serum, which is returned to the liquid state.
The red globules which desiccation had agglutinated, had become
motionless like ships stranded in shoal water. Now behold them afloat
again: they thicken, swell, round out their edges, detach themselves
from each other and prepare to circulate in their proper channels at the
first impulse which shall be given them by the contractions of the
heart."
"It remains to see," said M. Renault, "whether the heart will put itself
in motion. In a living man, the heart moves under the impulse of the
brain, transmitted by the nerves. The brain acts under the impulse of
the heart, transmitted by the arteries. The whole forms a perfectly
exact circle, without which there is no well-being. And when neither
heart nor brain acts, as in the Colonel's case, I don't see which of the
two can set the other in motion. You remember the scene in the '_Ecole
des femmes_,' where Arnolphe knocks at his door? The valet and the maid,
Alain and Georgette, are both in the house. 'Georgette!' cries
Alain.--'Well?' replies Georgette.--'Open the door down there!'--'Go
yourself! Go yourself!'--'Gracious me! I shan't go!'--'I shan't go
either!'--'Open it right away!'--'Open it yourself!' And nobody opens
it. I am inclined to think, Monsieur, that we are attending a
performance of this comedy. The house is the body of the Colonel;
Arnolphe, who wants to get in, is the Vital Principle. The heart and
brain act the parts of Alain and Georgette. 'Open the door!' says
one.--'Open it yourself!' says the other. And the Vital Principle waits
outside."
"Monsieur," replied Doctor Nibor smiling, "you forget the ending of the
scene. Arnolphe gets angry, and cries out: 'Whichever of you two doesn't
open the door, shan't have anything to eat for four days!' And forthwith
Alain hurries himself, Georgette runs and the door is opened. Now bear
in mind that I speak in this way only in order to conform to your own
course of reasoning, for the term 'Vital Principle' is at variance with
the actual assertions of science. Life will manifest itself as soon as
the brain, or the heart, or any one of the organs which have the
capacity of working spontaneously, shall have absorbed the quantity of
water it needs. Organized matter has inherent properties which manifest
themselves without the assistance of any foreign principle, whenever
they are surrounded by certain conditions. Why do not M. Fougas' muscles
contract yet? Why does not the tissue of the brain enter into action?
Because they have not yet the amount of moisture necessary to them. In
the fountain of life there is lacking, perhaps, a pint of water. But I
shall be in no hurry to refill it: I am too much afraid of breaking it.
Before giving this gallant fellow a final bath, it will be necessary to
knead all his organs again, to subject his abdomen to regular
compressions, in order that the serous membranes of the stomach, chest
and heart may be perfectly disagglutinated and capable of slipping on
each other. You are aware that the slightest tear in these parts, or the
least resistance, would be enough to kill our subject at the moment of
his revival."
While speaking, he united example to precept and kept kneading the trunk
of the Colonel. As the spectators had too nearly filled the bath-room,
making it almost impossible to move, M. Nibor begged them to move into
the laboratory. But the laboratory became so full that it was necessary
to leave it for the parlor: the Committee of the Biological Society, had
scarcely a corner of the table on which to draw up their account of the
proceedings. The parlor even was crowded with people, the dining room
too, and so out to the court yard of the house. Friends, strangers,
people not at all known to the family, elbowed each other and waited in
silence. But the silence of a crowd is not much less noisy than the
rolling of the sea. Fat Doctor Martout, apparently overwhelmed with
responsibility, showed himself from time to time, and surged through the
waves of curious people like a galleon laden with news. Every one of his
words circulated from mouth to mouth, and spread even through the
street, where several groups of soldiers and citizens were making a
stir, in more senses than one. Never had the little "Rue de la
Faisanderie" seen such a crowd. An astonished passer-by stopped and
inquired:
"What's the matter here? Is it a funeral?"
"Quite the reverse, Sir."
"A christening, then?"
"With warm water!"
"A birth?"
"A being born again!"
An old judge of the Civil Court was recounting to a deputy the legend of
Æson of old, who was boiled in Medea's caldron.
"This is almost the same experiment," said he, "and I am inclined to
think that the poets have calumniated the sorceress of Colchis. There
could be some fine Latin verses made appropriate to this occasion; but I
no longer possess my old skill!
'Fabula Medeam cur crimine carpit iniquo?
Ecce novus surgit redivivus Æson ab undis
Fortior, arma petens, juvenili pectore miles ...,'
"Redivivus is taken in the active sense; it's a license, or at least a
bold construction. Ah! Monsieur! there was a time when I was, even among
those who made the most confident attempts, _the_ man for Latin verses!"
* * * * *
"Corp'ral!" said a conscript of the levy of 1859.
"What is it, Freminot?"
"Is it true that they are boiling an old soldier in a pot, and that they
are going to get him up again, Colonel's uniform and all?"
"True or not, subaltern, I'll run the risk of saying it's true."
"I fancy, with all proper deference, that they will not make much at
it."
"You should know, Freminot, that nothing is impossible to your
superiors! You are not unaware even now, that dried vegetables, on being
boiled, recover their original and natural appearance!"
"But, Corp'ral, if one were to cook them, three days' time, they'd
dissolve into broth."
"But, imbecile, why shouldn't one consider old soldiers hard to cook?"
At noon, the commisioner of police and the lieutenant of _gens-d'armes_
made way through the crowd and entered the house. These gentlemen
hastened to declare to M. Renault that their visit had nothing of an
official character, but that they had come merely from curiosity. In the
corridor, they met the Sub-prefect, the Mayor and Gothon, who was
lamenting in loud tones that she should see the government lend its hand
to such sorceries.
About one o'clock, M. Nibor caused a new and prolonged bath to be given
the Colonel, on coming out of which, the body was subjected to a
kneading harder and more complete than before.
"Now," said the Doctor, "we can carry M. Fougas into the laboratory, in
order to give his resuscitation all the publicity desirable. But it will
be well to dress him, and his uniform is in tatters."
"I think," answered good M. Renault, "that the Colonel is about my size;
so I can lend him some of my clothes. Heaven grant that he may use
them! But, between us, I don't hope for it."
Gothon brought in, grumbling, all that was necessary to dress an
entirely naked man. But her bad humor did not hold out before the beauty
of the Colonel:
"Poor gentleman!" she exclaimed, "he is young, fresh and fair as a
little chicken. If he doesn't revive, it will be a great pity!"
There were about forty people in the laboratory when Fougas was carried
thither. M. Nibor, assisted by M. Martout, placed him on a sofa, and
begged a few moments of attentive silence. During these proceedings,
Mme. Renault sent to inquire if she could come in. She was admitted.
"Madame and gentlemen," said Dr. Nibor, "life will manifest itself in a
few minutes. It is possible that the muscles will act first, and that
their action may be convulsive, on account of not yet being regulated by
the influence of the nervous system. I ought to apprise you of this
fact, in order that you may not be frightened if such a thing
transpires. Madame, being a mother, ought to be less astonished at it
than any one else; she has experienced, at the fourth month of
pregnancy, the effect of those irregular movements which will, possibly,
soon be presented to us on a larger scale. I am quite hopeful, however,
that the first spontaneous contractions will take place in the fibres of
the heart. Such is the case in the embryo, where the rhythmic movements
of the heart, precede the nervous functions."
He again began making systematic compressions of the lower part of the
chest, rubbing the skin with his hands, half opening the eyelids,
examining the pulse, and auscultating the region of the heart.
The attention of the spectators was diverted an instant by a hubbub
outside. A battalion of the 23d was passing, with music at the head,
through the Rue de la Faisanderie. While the Sax-horns were shaking the
windows, a sudden flash mantled on the cheeks of the Colonel. His eyes,
which had stood half open, lit up with a brighter sparkle. At the same
instant, Doctor Nibor, who had his ear applied to the chest, cried:
"I hear the beatings of the heart!"
Scarcely had he spoken, when the chest rose with a violent inspiration,
the limbs contracted, the body straightened up, and out came a cry:
"_Vive l'Empereur_."
But as if so great an effort had overtasked his strength, Colonel Fougas
fell back on the sofa, murmuring in a subdued voice:
"Where am I? Waiter! Bring me a newspaper!"