Chapter 3

The world often describes with minuteness the material framework of such noisy events as have impressed its coarse 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 associated 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 grass 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'Hôpital 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 superstition! from which it is time that at least the scientific world were emancipated. 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 assume 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 participate 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 passions! 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 mass 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 emancipated 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 surpassing 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 Père 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 passively 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 amusement 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 _cimetière_ 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 passionately 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 passed out of sight? Destitute 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 rôle 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 impassioned 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 mass of invincible prejudices and prepossessions. The scheme was too new, too daring for the capacity of the mediocrities which constitute 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 _clientèle_. 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 là."

And all my protestations served only to increase their amusement, 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."

I flushed red with anger, but this last rebuff warned me that I must change my tactics. Like all reformers, I found the world too stiff and rigid for my purposes, and only harmed myself with kicking against the bristling pricks. I must turn to a new generation, to early youth, and find some mind still unformed and flexible, that I could myself submit to a far-sighted training, and cast into the mould of my own ideas. The opportunities of which my contemporaries were unworthy, I would reserve as a gracious boon for a well-initiated pupil.

Two years had elapsed since my arrival at Paris, and the untiring energy with which I pursued physiological researches had begun to bring my name into notice. When, therefore, I proposed to open a course of lectures upon experimental physiology, my friends all encouraged me with flattering assurances.

"A la bonne heure," exclaimed the student to whom had I once addressed my secret plans, "something sensible at last. I trust such rational occupation will purge your head of its maggots, and satisfy your aspirations for fame--"

I smiled stealthily to myself. It is thus that the light world always measures the austerity of our resolutions by its own lightness!

I obtained the requisite official permission, and opened the course at the École Pratique under the best auspices. The lectures were thronged from the beginning, and the interest by no means abated as the weeks rolled on. Enthusiastic myself, I possessed in no small degree the gift of communicating (on all ordinary subjects) my enthusiasm to others. I aimed less at imparting solid instruction to my pupils than at impressing their imagination by a series of skilfully arranged effects. My experiments, therefore, were governed by dramatic unity, rarely sought in the confused and arid expositions of official professors. Now I led my auditors into the inmost laboratories of Nature, and revealed, in plant and animal, the fine affinities that regulated her processes of nutrition. Now I traced some delicate nervous filament from the spinal column of the amphioxus to the cerebral hemisphere of the mammifer. Now I disclosed the ramifying canals in the vast system of circulation, mounting from the spongy network of the mollusk and the sluggish lymphatic of the reptile to the brilliant, bounding arteries of the double-hearted vertebrates. And always, beyond the last disclosure, after the most complete revelation, I hinted at something yet to come, some higher, unveiled mystery, to which all this grand series was but the prelude. As a priest who volubly initiates the neophytes into the service of the temple, but points in silence to the inner court containing the Deity for whom the service is performed, so I, after the most magnificent display of animal life, silently indicated a concealed hereafter, a culmination in the human body, hitherto withheld from our curious gaze. I thus strove to suggest an ideal, left for a time incomplete; to foster an impetuous impatience, that, stimulated by the great acquisitions of the past, should reach forward irresistibly for the greater prize of the future. I trusted that among all my auditors would be found one that should divine the cipher, and quicken over its subtle secret--one intellect, that, carried unconsciously along the current of my thought, should finally arrive at my unrevealed goal.

Among the most constant attendants on the lectures, I had long noticed one young man of about twenty-two years old, who always occupied the same seat close to my operating-table. He was thin, shabbily dressed, with full, intense forehead, ravenous face, and brilliant eyes. His poverty was indicated not only by his toilette, and that special form of unfed expression peculiar to the studious hungry, but also by his absence from all the private classes, and redoubled assiduity at the public lectures. His intelligence was evident from the absorbed attention with which he followed the experiments, and from his manner of taking notes,--not at random, like most of the students, but at well-chosen points perceptible only to a person already in possession of a commanding view of the whole subject. By a little stratagem, I contrived one day to get hold of his note-book, and was surprised at the accurate observations, the acute suggestions, and range of information indicated by the marginal queries. Those who have ever experienced the delight of discovering an intellect--discovery more precious than that of a gold mine--can appreciate the eagerness with which I devoured these pages, finding everywhere the stamp of the mind I sought. And my satisfaction was redoubled by reflecting how greatly the youth and poverty of the writer might increase my facilities for obtaining complete possession of him. I was not long in devising a scheme for forcing the intimacy of the young man, who, like most poor students, was evidently as shy and proud as he was poor.

One day, at the close of the lecture, I touched my student on the arm.

"Be kind enough to wait a moment," I said, "I have something to say to you."

The boy flushed and drew back a little with all the haughtiness of a sensitive person ill at ease with the world, and expecting from it nothing but rebuffs and insolence. I fancied that an anxious suspicion crossed his mind that I was about to lay claim to some payment for lessons, of which he had hitherto ignored the necessity. I waited till the greater part of the crowd had squeezed through the narrow door of the amphitheatre, dismissed the loiterers, and then turned to my companion with a frank air of relief, as to an equal with whom I could refresh myself after the fatigue of teaching lesser minds. I saw that I had already won his heart, before I began to speak.

"I find that I require another assistant," I said. "The man that I have at present, is, as you know, a mere machine. I need some one interested, enthusiastic, capable of seconding me intelligently. I want, in short, a pupil. Will you fill the place?"

Surprised, overwhelmed with an honor which he could so keenly appreciate, the young man flushed again, hesitated, stammered, and finally only succeeded in answering me with his beautiful eyes, for his tongue refused to speak. I already loved the boy; alas! how he has repaid my love!

"It will be a mutual exchange of service," I continued. "You will be of great use to me in my preparations, and, in return, I may be able to initiate you into the mysteries of our art, somewhat more thoroughly than can be done in a public lecture."

"I thank you, sir," said Guy. He tried to speak coldly, but he looked as if he longed to throw himself at my feet and cover my hand with kisses. To relieve his emotion, in which I secretly exulted, I patted him friendlily on the shoulder, and began immediately to discuss the programme for the following lecture.

I had every reason to congratulate myself on my new assistant. His zeal and ingenuity not only seconded my researches, but often supplemented them when over-fatigue persuaded me to repose. And Guy's personal character proved as winning as his intellect keen and reliable. Before long I contrived that he should come and live with me, and I invented for him some light literary employment, by which he could pay me for his board and lodging, with an insignificant sacrifice of his time. He acceded to this arrangement upon its apparent terms, but none the less did he pierce its transparent motive, and tacitly devote to me his whole soul in acknowledgment of what he considered my delicate generosity. These unfledged souls are apt to throw themselves thus away in exchange for the most trifling pecuniary service, and torment themselves, moreover, that the compensation is so mean. I smiled at Guy's naïveté, but none the less turned it to account. From the foothold thus gained, I rapidly extended my influence over his entire nature. My larger experience enabled me to complete his unfinished thoughts, to sympathize with his scarcely conscious feelings, to subtly impress his principles and co-ordinate them to my own scheme. Having begun by forestalling his material necessities, I continued to supply the finer wants of heart and intellect so completely, that he became habituated to turn to me for everything, and to receive everything that came from me with implicit faith. I fed him, taught him, loved him, and all with such artfulness, that he felt my presence in his life only as a plant feels the sunshine in its calyx, conscious of no intrusion to be resented, or tyranny to be repelled. It is so easy to make the conquest of a young, ingenuous nature! so easy to fix its impetuous, unsuspecting enthusiasm! I marvel that these exquisite relations between master and pupil are so generally left uncultivated, or their charm wasted. I almost marvel that I did not rest completely satisfied with my life at that time; with its arduous study, and its growing fame, and Guy, with the delicious task of educating his supple intellect to my ideas, and penetrating his nature with my personality. Only the loftiness of my ideal saved it from making womanish shipwreck on this episode in its austere voyage towards the realization.

As Guy became more and more competent, I delegated more and more into his hands the preparation for the lectures. The first excitement of getting them into train was past, the first keen interest dulled by habit; and when the second winter began, with repetition of all that had gone before, I went through the business almost mechanically. Often I left everything to my assistant, and shut myself up alone to dream over the project that secretly absorbed my soul. Guy fancied I was ill, and, as my exertions slackened, redoubled his own, consuming heart and brain in the resolve to maintain the course at the level of its original popularity. I was inwardly amused at his devotion to such secondary considerations, but did not interfere, for it helped to serve my purpose.

Finally, I believed my pupil to be fully prepared, and decided that the moment had come for the complete revelation of myself.