e
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 _clientele_. 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 la."

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 impertinenc