ing 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 _confrere_:

"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 th