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 _fete_ 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.