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 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