Stories by American Authors Volume II Part 2

A MARTYR TO SCIENCE.

BY MARY PUTNAM JACOBI, M.D.

_Putnam's Magazine, August, 1869._

My brief residence at Rome sufficed to destroy my illusions.

A Frenchman, a student of medicine, I had, nevertheless, remained an ardent disciple of Catholicism,--the faith in which I had been brought up by a devout mother. She was an Italian, and from her I had inherited an intense, pa.s.sionate nature, and capacity for belief, which my father's nationality failed to neutralize. From him, on the other hand, I had received my education, my profession, and a certain large habit of thought, which, disdaining all lesser interests, personal or national, occupied itself exclusively with themes of universal humanity. This habit, extremely characteristic of French intellect, concurred,--perhaps as much as anything else,--in making me an ultra-montanist. As an Italian, I believed in the Church with ardor,--because I believed; as a Frenchman, I demanded a church universal, as alone worthy of attaching my belief. The cause of the Pope was for me identified with the spiritual cause of the world, and the lukewarmness of so-called Liberal Catholics enraged me. I could understand the opposition of materialists, of atheists, or even Protestants. These all occupied a radically different base, and their eyes were turned toward a different horizon. But that a man could face Truth, and voluntarily scrimp his vision to a miserable corner of her robe,--could embrace a principle coldly, with the mere touch of a distant finger,--could pause to balance motives, and haggle over the price of devotion,--this was as incomprehensible to me as repugnant.

My own sentiments were equally incomprehensible to the society by which I was surrounded, and the opposition which I constantly encountered served not a little to rivet my convictions, and fan my enthusiasm to pa.s.sion.

My father died almost immediately after launching me on my medical career,--and my darling mother, two years later. In my unutterable loneliness, I lost all heart for my studies, and breaking away from ecole and hospitals, wandered in Italy, seeking to quench a quenchless grief. There I married an Italian girl, whose hair and eyes reminded me of my mother, but who expended on the dream of Italian unity such enthusiasm as my mother had lavished for the temporal power of the Pope. I think I was unconsciously attracted by this very difference.

Valeria's opposition to the Pope was so serious and whole-souled, that it seemed to invest his cause with new dignity, and in argument with her I acquired increased respect for my own theories and for myself as capable of sustaining them. Moreover, at the very moment that our intellects were most at variance, we were each conscious of a subtle sympathy of nature; we were animated by the same feeling, though working in different directions. Her antagonism, therefore, never irritated me, but,--when the more profound union had once been established,--fascinated me by a peculiar charm, and led me, by a healthful transition, back to the ruder antagonisms of practical life.

For, deprived of the support of my mother's lofty confidence, and in the weakness following excessive sorrow, I had begun to secretly despair of an ideal, which seemed buried in her all-devouring grave.

At the same time I clung to it the more intensely, precisely because it seemed unattainable,--from a sort of morbid craving for whatever had become as unattainable as my mother's presence. I loathed action, even for the realization of my dreams, and over-concentrated thought threatened to degenerate into a sickly reverie that should presently exhaust the forces of my life, like an unnaturally prolonged sleep.

New influence added in this direction might have driven me insane, while the diversion afforded by Valeria's counter-enthusiasm and the necessity of making an active defence of my own, roused me, and brought back the blood to the surface of my life. It was, therefore, partly an instinct of self-preservation which led me to Valeria,--and she saved me--my n.o.ble wife saved me for other destinies.

We returned to Paris, where I resumed and completed my medical studies, and I had just graduated when the war broke out in Italy.

Four happy, healthful years had completely restored my mental equilibrium. I was no longer an extravagant fanatic, prepared for a cloister or a crusade, but still a tolerably ardent ultra-montanist, pivoted upon the theory of the temporal power of the Pope. Valeria's influence, in modifying the superficial exuberance of my enthusiasm, had only rendered its energy more practical, more eager for an opportunity to incarnate its ideal in vigorous facts. Now the opportunity had arrived, and the enthusiasm blazed forth afresh; all interests, all consciousness of other ties were absorbed in devotion to the Church of which I felt myself a not unimportant member. My fortune, my time, my life, were all too little to place at its disposal, and I hastened to enrol myself on the medical staff of a regiment of Papal Zouaves. Valeria, who had always reasoned against my theories, was too consistent herself to oppose me in putting them into practice, but she insisted on accompanying me to Italy. We parted at Civita Vecchia, I to go to Rome, she, with our two children, to Naples, where her family had formerly resided. She wrote to me every day, but after several weeks came a blank of three days without a letter. At the same moment arrived the news that the cholera was raging at Naples--news which rendered most ominous this sudden interruption of the correspondence. I obtained leave of absence and hurried south, to learn that my wife and babies were dead--fallen among the very first victims of the pestilence.

Stunned and heart-sick, I returned to Rome, anxious to devote myself to the cause with the more desperate earnestness that it was the only living interest left to me in the world. I arrived just before the battle of Montana, and regretted that fortune had not a.s.signed me a role among the soldiers of the cross, among those who might embrace a welcome death, in exchange for the glory of serving the Church.

Resolved to approach this honor as nearly as possible, I contrived to obtain an appointment in the ambulance corps, and accompanied the troops to the field. I have no distinct recollection of that day,--the third after Valeria's funeral,--and which, as my first experience of a battle, a.s.sumed to me the magnificent proportions of an Austerlitz or Waterloo. I only know that, intoxicated by the novel excitement of the scene, perhaps by the mere smell of the gun-powder, I forgot the duties to which I was a.s.signed, s.n.a.t.c.hed a musket from a Zouave who had just expired at my feet, and rushed into the heart of the conflict. I received a slight wound in the forehead, staggered, fell, and fainted away. I suppose I must, at the same time, have received the shock from a larger ball than that which grazed my temple, and experienced some concussion of the brain, for I did not fully recover consciousness until I had been transported to the military hospital.

Here I stayed a week, and came, for the first time, into near contact with my fellow-defenders of the faith. The contact, instead of warming, chilled me inexplicably. Instead of belief, I discovered scepticism; instead of enthusiasm, persiflage and eternal quizzing, intolerable in professed martyrs to a sacred cause.

"Que voulez-vous?" they said, shrugging their shoulders at my indignant remonstrances. "The a.s.s who carries all his panniers on the same side stumbles on his own nose. To each man his business; those who believe, don't fight; and we who fight cannot be expected to believe."

I was surprised to find that my own loyalty became affected by this indifference, much more than by any influence to which I had hitherto been submitted. Others had sneered because they did not know; but these men precisely because they knew too well. The cause which depended so exclusively upon their bravado was belittled in their own eyes, and presently in mine also. I felt somewhat ashamed of the drops of blood I had lavished so heroically at Montana, and when the gazettes began to flourish the fame of the victory, repeat the dying speeches of fallen braves, and enrol rascally Zouaves on saintly calendars, I could have blushed in the dark--everywhere a little martyrdom, a little battle, and innumerable little apotheoses. I began to doubt the greatness of the cause made up of such infinitesimals. It is easy to serve ideas in which we have ceased to heartily believe, but it is impossible to fight for those that have become to us the least in the world ridiculous. Perhaps Valeria's death had unconsciously disheartened me for an enterprise which had been, however remotely, its occasion. Perhaps many of her words, whose force I had successfully resisted during her lifetime, now re echoed from her grave with more profound significance. But it is certain that, for the first time, I wavered in affection for my life-long ideal. Alarmed at myself, and determined, if possible, to reinvigorate my failing faith, I went back to Rome, trusting that the Holy City would inspire me afresh. Appointed to a civil office of considerable importance, I was soon introduced into the midst of the Papal Court, and behind the scenes of the magnificent theatrical display that had so long dazzled my imagination. I was initiated into the shameful mysteries of cabal and intrigue, and taught the precious secrets of Pope and Cardinals.

On every side I saw falsehood, treachery, and duplicity welcomed as the ablest servitors of truth, the grandest professions a.s.sumed as an excuse for the most vulgar villainy, ambition glozed over by degrading humility, and sensuality all the more disgusting from the saintly robes in which it was paraded and but half concealed. My faith, already enfeebled, died of rapid decline, stifled by these monstrous fooleries. Disenchanted, revolted, disgusted, I resigned my position, and abandoned the Pope and his cause forever.

I did not, therefore, enlist under Garibaldi. A tenacious loyalty to the memory of ideas I had once served would always prevent me from more actively attacking them, or from desecrating their graves.

Moreover, the revulsion of feeling consequent upon my disillusion was so tremendous, that I was swept entirely out of the region of the questions at issue, and both sides became indifferent to me, both camps dim and shadowy in the distance.

I returned, therefore, to France, and settled down in a remote corner of the provinces, to exercise my profession as a country physician.

After the acc.u.mulated anguish of the last few months, the quiet dulness of the place was infinitely grateful to me. I was like a bruised swimmer, tossed upon a monotonous sandbank, who only asks to be left there in peace, until long repose has rested the aching limbs, and blunted the harrowing recollections of the shipwreck. The incessant excitement of Paris was intolerable to me, and scarcely less so the idea of revisiting its troops of sympathetic friends. They would proffer venal consolation for the loss of my wife and children; they would congratulate me maliciously on my conversion from ultra-montanism. I shrank from their curious eyes and voluble tongues, as a wounded man from the glittering apparatus of the surgeon, and like him turned over my face to the wall, to sleep.

Two years thus pa.s.sed away--two years of mornings and evenings, following one another in calm succession, like a row of stolid peasant gleaners going to the fields. I became inexpressibly soothed by their calm, and by the nice tact and exquisite courtesy of Nature, with whom I had done well to take refuge. She is never astonished, she asks no impertinent questions, but welcomes her guests with even suavity, like a liberal host, throwing open to them drawing-room or garret, as may best please their fancy. The growing trees had no time to turn round to look at me; the contended hills embraced me in their arms, and let me pa.s.s without a word; the grain ripened in the mellow autumn days, unheeding the little shadow that I threw across its sunshine. This preoccupied indifference of all living things, which would initiate a mere vexation, clamorous for sympathy, is like blessed balm to the sufferer from a profound grief or mortification. Counsel is good, friendliness precious, while anything remains to be done to avert an impending calamity. But pitying words over an accomplished and irremediable misfortune, serve only to revive useless pain, and blunder, like a man who should try to force open the eyelids of a corpse. Nature, wiser than officious human tenderness, takes the sorrow coolly, as a matter of course, and in silence buries it out of sight among a million others, already thickly strewn with withered leaves. And, in presence of her imperturbable serenity during the blackest days of frost and winter, the sufferer becomes insensibly inspired with her unspoken confidence in the final return of spring.

The people of the village and the farms, rooted as their own beeches, reflected back upon Nature the same immovable calm. They did not disturb themselves about me, because my role in society was so evident, respectable, and satisfactory, that I offered no foothold for either curiosity or scandal. I had been sent by Providence and the Faculty of Medicine to cure their not too frequent rheumatisms and catarrhs; I acquitted myself not ill of my business,--they asked no more,--and neither offered nor expected personal interest or friendship.

As the months rolled on, I became more interested than formerly in medical reading. Absorbed entirely in my books, I even fancied that the healing apathy which sheltered my life was growing more profound.

This was a mistake; the thickening of the vapors that shut out the external world, really denoted that they were about to condense and precipitate themselves into a new creation. New interests were preparing, that should presently claim from my nature all the energy, enthusiasm, and pa.s.sion which had once been devoted to the old. Of this I became aware in the following manner. One day, among a package of books sent to me from Paris, arrived a pamphlet just written in defence of a new theory concerning the movements of the human heart.

My curiosity was excited by the idea of a new theory on such a famous subject, and my interest was by no means abated after perusal of the pamphlet. Exposition of this theory would demand a crowd of technical details, unintelligible to the general reader, and therefore inappropriate in this place. But let such an one take the trouble to listen for a moment to the ticking of a heart, seemingly so monotonous, simple, and easy to understand, and then reflect that the slight elements discoverable in this little sound, have been forced by human intellect into at least twenty different combinations, and afforded ground for as many theories, each defended with impa.s.sioned earnestness by a different observer. He may then realize something of the interest which attaches to the explanation of this phenomenon--may even experience a sort of mental vertigo, as if he had witnessed the evolution of a world out of nothing. Owing to the paucity of the facts to be observed, the finesse requisite for the observation, and the intellectual dexterity needed to retain such minute circ.u.mstances before the mind long enough to think about them, the problem is one of the most delicate and intricate offered by physiological science. Once engaged in its discussion, the mind becomes hopelessly fascinated, and continues to pirouette about an invisible point, that is neither a thought nor a material phenomenon, but, as it were, a refined essence of both.

As in all series of vital actions, each item of the phenomenon in question is so interlinked with the rest, that an explanation of a part can never be considered final, so long as any problem remains unresolved. The latest experimentator, brooding over hitherto neglected details, may always hope to light upon some clue that shall unravel the entire entanglement in a different manner, and reform upon a new basis ideas now grouped in pretended fixity. The excitement caused by this possibility is amply sufficient to stimulate research.

And there is no need to discover an immediate practical application for the theory in order to bait the interest of vulgar minds. These would always be incapable of such difficult investigations, while really competent students were supremely indifferent to all lesser advantages attached to the discovery of truth. As for me, I had been so long removed from active life and its necessities (for my professional career had as yet been too facile and commonplace to arouse me to them), that the impractical character of the subject const.i.tuted for me an additional charm. I recognized that it belonged, for the present at least, to the region of pure thought, pure science, accessible only to intelligences refined by nature, and enriched by superior culture. In addition, therefore, to the intrinsic interest of the problem, and the solid satisfaction arising from acute intellectual activity, I could, in pursuit of this theme, experience all the subtle pleasure derived from a consciousness of personal superiority--pleasure as attainable in solitude as elsewhere since the superiority was too real and unquestionable to require the confirmatory suffrage of the crowd.

I abandoned all other studies, and threw myself impetuously into the current of these newly-received ideas. I ransacked my library, from Herophilus to Haller, from Galen to Helmholtz. England, Germany, Italy, France yielded up their tribute to my excited curiosity. And the theme, shifted, refracted from intellect to intellect, multiplied itself to bewildering complexity.

Not content with reading, I performed experiments, repeating those of my predecessors, and inventing new to control their conclusions. "With my own hands I stirred the soil, fetid and palpitating with life," and in this inmost intimacy with Nature felt myself grow strong, as Antaeus by contact with the mother earth. Thus roused from my long torpor into the most intense activity,--for all activity is slack in comparison with that of thought,--I became dissatisfied with the facility of my present surroundings. I was anxious to pit myself against the world of Paris. I wanted opposition, contradiction, in order to vanquish them, and absorb their force into the glory of my triumph. Moreover, my studies had now reached a point where they required the a.s.sistance that could only be obtained in a great city: in a word, I resolved to return to the capital, for a longer or shorter time, as the sequel should prove desirable. My means rendered me independent of my _clientele_, and I left my patients without regret to the care of an easily procured subst.i.tute. It is so rare to alight upon an interesting case in the country! Nothing but rheumatism and measles, measles and rheumatism, and never an autopsy,--it is as monotonous as the treatment of fever and ague. I longed for the vast metropolitan hospitals, containing specimens of every shade of disease, and affording unlimited opportunities for auscultation. Of these I stood especially in need, for the train of thought suggested by physiological experiment must be completed by pathological researches, which could only be carried on at Paris.

To Paris, therefore, I came, as to a new world, so completely had I been separated from it during the two last years. It was as if one of the spirits in the metempsychosis imagined by Fourier, had returned to the brilliant sphere from which death had driven him in temporary exile. I was at first enchanted, intoxicated. The mental activity which had seemed so intense in the sluggish province, needed to be quickened fourfold to keep abreast of the intellects with which I entered into relation, and the consciousness of the quickening affected me as with new wine. But, as I grew accustomed to my new medium, I became again subtly dissatisfied. It was not enough to be abreast of the world, I wanted to be a little ahead. In my solitude it was easy to cherish illusions concerning the value of my own work, to picture myself as a mighty and triumphant wrestler with Nature, capable, by his single strength, of forcing her reluctant secrets, to reveal them afterwards to an admiring world. But at Paris, with its enormous condensation of intellectual force, I could not flatter myself on the solitary greatness of my achievements, nor ignore the collective action of society. Whatever my attainment, I should be forced to share its fame with a hundred other workers, who had lent me, unasked, their aid. The distance between the person who uttered the last word, and him who said the next to the last, was infinitesimal, and this close proximity annoyed me. I longed for some brilliant occasion to surpa.s.s all my contemporaries in one great bound; an opportunity to bestow on science and humanity some unique benefit that could never be compared with those acc.u.mulated by lesser men. One day, revolving many things in my mind, I entered the Bibliotheque Imperiale. Strolling idly past the grated bookcases, my attention was attracted by the t.i.tle of a thin folio, wedged in between Lavater and Geoffroy St. Hilaire. An inexplicable impulse led me to demand this book, the "History of Vesalius and his Times." I had no particular reason, that I knew of, to be interested in Vesalius; I merely followed an idle whim, suggested rather by the peculiar shape and position of the folio, than by any solid reason; and this whim did not hurry me out of my lounging mood. I settled myself in one of the windows, and leisurely turned over the leaves of my book, reading a line here and a phrase there, until I alighted and settled upon the following pa.s.sage: "So the rumor spread abroad that Vesalius had opened the chest of a living man to see his heart beat. And upon that the people were in a fury and the court hissed with rage, and Vesalius was obliged to flee from Spain before the power of the Inquisition; and some say that he then made a pilgrimage to the Holy Land. But on his return he was shipwrecked on a desolate island and perished miserably. Hubert, in his _Vindiciae contra tyrannus_ reports this history to the eternal shame of the Jesuits."

The world often describes with minuteness the material framework of such noisy events as have impressed its coa.r.s.e sensibilities. But it commonly neglects, because ignoring, the scenes wherein have taken place the crises of thought, or occurred the birth of new, indomitable ideas. To the thinker, however, such outer scenes remain inextricably a.s.sociated with the thought that has sprung to life in their midst. To this day I preserve a vivid recollection of every item of the place where I read the story of Vesalius; the lofty reading-room, with its confused lining of many-colored books, the tables crowded by eager students, the broad, deep windows through which the sun streamed, and from which I, sitting with open folio on my lap, watched the shifting fountain and the swaying trees and the long, untrimmed gra.s.s in the courtyard below. For the story seemed to have laid hold of my inmost soul, and touched the spring of a long-hidden desire. Why I was so moved, I could not tell. What issue would open to this whirlpool of vague excitement in which I had fallen, I had no idea. But I was profoundly conscious both of the excitement and the emotion, and, with that refined epicureanism of which intellectual people alone are capable, I abandoned myself, for a time, to the subtle luxury of their enjoyment.

My reverie was interrupted by the clanging of the great clock and the scarcely less harsh voice of the _gardien_ as he announced the hour for closing the library. Still wrapped in fantastic meditation, I descended the stairs to the street, and followed the rue Richelieu to the boulevard, there to mingle with the human stream that endlessly encircled the city like a new army of Gideon. Drifting in the current, I reached the Bastile, crossed the Pont d'Austerlitz, gained the Boulevard de l'Hopital and continued walking to the Invalides, to the Avenues Jena and Wagram, and from the Place des Ternes, all along the exterior rampart. And as I walked, my entangled thoughts gradually disengaged themselves into clearness and precision.

The biographer of Vesalius, who evidently shared the prejudices of the people, had exerted himself strenuously to disprove the calumny attached to the name of the great anatomist. He, like the rest, was blinded by that vulgar egotism which clamorously prefers the interests of individuals to those of society,--egotism no less short-sighted than vulgar, for the large and abstract interests cared for by science are precisely those which shall ultimately affect the greatest number of individuals; and no less inconsequent than short-sighted, since no one hesitates to ruin entire hosts of individuals upon the faintest chance of promoting the material interests of society. A stock company may immolate hundreds during the construction of a Panama railroad--a sovereign sacrifice thousands in the contest for a Crimean peninsula; the hue and cry only begins when the savant modestly begs permission to utilize a single life for the advancement of science. He is execrated as a monster, and burned alive in expiation of his crime. Absurd inconsistency, trivial superst.i.tion!

from which it is time that at least the scientific world were emanc.i.p.ated. Long enough has the ignorant rabble exercised brute tyranny over intellects towering above its comprehension. The time for concession is past, the moment has arrived for the savant to a.s.sume the sway that rightfully devolves upon him and declare the confiscation of all claims to the supreme interest of the search after truth.

For my part, therefore, so far from blaming Vesalius because he had dissected a living man, I should have accorded him most profound reverence for this proof of elevation above ordinary prejudice. And the more I thought over the matter, the more I became convinced that the accusation was well founded, that the deed had really been performed, which moral cowardice alone induced the glorious criminal to disavow.

My brooding fancy, satiated with the image of the great anatomist, began to occupy itself with his so-called victim. Who was he? what motive had induced him to surrender his body to the scalpel of the master, his life to the realization of the master's idea? A slave, a debtor, from whom the ingenious savant had thus exacted a pound of flesh? A trembling poltroon, forced to the sacrifice more reluctantly than Isaac to the altar? I preferred rather to believe that it was a favorite pupil, burning with enthusiasm for the master, joyful to partic.i.p.ate in his mighty labors at the cheap expense of his own lesser life. Had Vesalius been a general, and he an aide-de-camp before a rampart, all the world would have applauded him, rushing upon death at the word of command. I myself had known, by a brief experience, the thrilling impulse to fight, to die, in behalf of a cause. Rivers of blood had been shed for honor, for loyalty, for patriotism. Was the desire for truth less ardent than these worn-out pa.s.sions! Could it not rather supply their place in the new world about to be created by science? What could produce a greater impression upon the entire world, and more forcibly announce the inauguration of a new era, than the voice of a man who should declare, "I refuse to draw my sword for the hideous folly of war; to surrender my life at the absurd caprice of princes; but I offer myself cheerfully, unreservedly, as the instrument of Science, in her majestic schemes for the discovery of truth!"

My recent studies on the problem of the heart's movements brought me into peculiar sympathy with the object of Vesalius' researches. The tantalizing results as often obtained by experiments on lower animals, the uncertainty of the inferences that could be deduced from them to form a theory of the human organism, had often excited in me a lively desire for a direct experiment upon man. This desire had hitherto been smothered beneath the ma.s.s of conventional ideas, which so frequently overwhelm our timidity and enslave our feebleness in endless routine.

But the daring word of genius had now struck the chains from my intellect, and emanc.i.p.ated me from the slavery of that hesitation.

I--I would follow in the path already traced by that bolder mind; I would redeem that calumniated memory from disgrace, and enrich its glory by the surpa.s.sing realization of the original conception. _I_ would inaugurate the new era; I would set the example of supreme heroism in science; and all the world, and all future ages, should preserve my name with reverent homage, and enwreath it with laurels of undying fame. For, that the purity of my motives might be above suspicion, I would perform the experiment, not as Vesalius in the capacity of anatomist, but as the victim, voluntarily devoting himself to the transcendent interests of an ideal cause.

And as my mind leaped up into this grand thought, I felt cheek and brow flush with violent emotion. Carried along by the first impetus of the idea, I walked as rapidly as in a dream, unseeing, unhearing every thing that surrounded me. Before I knew whither I had come, I felt a cool wind blow over me, as if after a feverish journey on a heated road, I had suddenly stepped into a cool, dark cavern. And, looking out from the brilliant visions in which I was plunged, I found myself already entered within the gates of Pere la Chaise--the city of the dead, of the vast majority to which I was to go over in fulfilment of my great idea. I wandered among the graves, and read the epitaphs, the reiterated dreary expressions of disappointment and despair, that the deceased had been pa.s.sively torn from a world to which every fibre of their hearts was clinging. Not so would read _my_ epitaph, and I began to compose it, less as a witty amus.e.m.e.nt than as a device for resisting an insidious chill that had begun to creep over me like a damp exhalation from the graves. For my imagination suddenly pictured to itself the heavy tombstone pressing down, down forever, on the cruel coffin-lid beneath which I should be lying. I shuddered at the picture, I shuddered at death, and, leaning on an iron rail which girt in a tomb, hid my face in my arms to shut out the signs of decay and the more ghastly emblems of immortality with which the populous _cimetiere_ was crowded.

Raising my head after a brief struggle, I perceived that I was standing in front of the famous tomb of Abelard and Heloise. The sculptured forms of the unhappy lovers reposed side by side on the lid of the stone mausoleum, as they had lain for six centuries, and immortalized the mingling of their mortal dust below. Tears sprang to my eyes as I looked at their still, peaceful faces, for I remembered my dead wife, and then, my lost children. Death, that contained them in its hollow caverns, could not be frightful to me. It was rather the treasure-house of all I possessed most precious, and which I should now hasten to reclaim. All the loneliness and longing which had been dulled by habit, and lately covered over by mental activity, awoke, and cried out pa.s.sionately within me, repelling the slight pleasures of this world, as a child crying for its mother dashes aside an offered toy. What was left to me in life that I should cling to it?

What ties bound me to this perfidious, slippery earth? To whom owed I any duties? Whose pillow would moisten with tears because I had pa.s.sed out of sight? Dest.i.tute of personal interests, I could only devote myself to those of humanity, and that by some method that should concentrate in a single moment both the achievement and its reward.

For small were the enjoyment to survive for fame, with whose report I could return laden to no fireside, for whose sake I could watch no eyes brighten in sweet pride of sympathy. I should sicken of it in half an hour, and my hard-earned laurels would become as dusty and lifeless as those ghastly wreaths of immortelles hanging around Heloise's tomb. So desolated love joined itself to restless ambition and ideal enthusiasm, to concentrate my life for the purpose from which, since then, it has never swerved.

Thus resolved upon self-devotion, I set about the task of finding a colleague to share the risks and glory of my enterprise. I did not conceal from myself that upon him would devolve a role far more difficult and complicated than my own. From me, the subject of the proposed experiment, was only required sublime heroism for the sacrifice. But the man who should perform the operation must possess moral courage to face public criticism, perhaps opprobrium; a trained intellect, already habituated to discussion of the problem in question, and impa.s.sioned for its solution; great practical skill and finesse, able to appreciate and profit by every detail of the phenomena that would unroll themselves before his observation; iron nerve, that should remain unmoved by any startling peculiarities of the case in hand.

The necessity for uniting so many characteristics, compelled me to abandon my first hope of forming a committee for the experiment; for as soon as I began to sound physiologists on the subject, I landed knee-deep in a ma.s.s of invincible prejudices and prepossessions. The scheme was too new, too daring for the capacity of the mediocrities which const.i.tute the bulk of even the scientific world. I must discover some exceptional solitary enthusiast like myself, able to appreciate and embrace with joy the grand opportunity I offered him.

To the search for this enthusiast, therefore, I bent all my energies, and knocked at many doors, wherever, through the windows, I believed to have detected on the hearth the upleaping of an inner flame.

It was astonishing how often I knocked in vain! How often my insinuations, my suggestions, my direct propositions were repulsed! I appealed to a professor who had concentrated the best years of his life to the problem I proposed to solve,--he pooh-poohed my scheme. In vain I tried to explain my methods for overcoming its practical difficulties; he decried them all, I am convinced, from pure jealousy.

"And you ought to know by this time," he added with a scarcely disguised sneer, "that a single experiment on a human subject would be of little value until its results were controlled by a dozen others.

And I doubt that your enthusiasm would prove sufficiently contagious to furnish the supply for the dissecting table." And he obstinately shut his ears to any further argument.

I disclosed my plan to a struggling physician, ready for any adventure that should thrust him into notoriety, bring his name before the public, and thus open the way to a prosperous _clientele_. Yet he recoiled from a project fraught with promise so sure and magnificent as mine. A hospital _interne_, flushed with enthusiasm for his first practical studies, started with horror when I divulged my ideas.

Many, true Parisian _railleurs_, regarded my proposition as an excellent joke.

"Allons donc, c'est une vieille blague que tu nous fais la."

And all my protestations served only to increase their amus.e.m.e.nt, and their determination not to be taken in.

A few eyed me suspiciously, as if they imagined I were insane, and one old bourgeois doctor had the impertinence to administer to me a moral lecture.

"Young man," he said, "you are possessed by the same preposterous vanity which induced Empedocles to throw himself into Vesuvius, and Erostratus to fire the temple of Diana. I recommend a course of dry cupping to the nape of the neck, to relieve your congested and over-excited brain, and, in the mean time, a decent seclusion from society, that you insult with your absurdities."