re 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 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 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
_cimetiere_ was crowded.