fter to sympathize, no matter what space may
divide them._ 'T is in a nutshell, you perceive,--and giving me the
entire principle of an unlimited telegraphic communication. All that was
to do was to systematize it. Tedious work, you may conceive, Monsieur;
yet I did not shrink from it, nor find it irksome, for my assured
result was ever leading me onward. Ah, bah! what did I not dream
then?--_Passons!_

"I was not rich, and so, to save the trouble and expense of importing
my snails to Paris,--vast trouble and expense, of course, since my
experiments were so numerous,--I came across the Atlantic, and fixed
myself at a point near St. Louis, where I could study in peace and have
the subjects of my experiments close at hand. I used to pay the trappers
liberally to get my snails for me, instructing them how to gather and
how to transport them; and to divert all suspicion from my real
objects, I pretended to be a _gourmet_, who used the snails solely for
gastronomic purposes,--whereby, Monsieur," said Cesar Prevost, with
a humorous smile, "I was unfortunate enough to inspire the hearty
_garcons_ with a supreme contempt for me, and they used to say I 'vas
not bettaire zan one blarsted Digger Injun!' _Mon Dieu!_ what martyrs
the votaries of Science have been, always!

"_Eh, bien!_ I shall not bother you with my experiments. In brief, let
me give you only results, so as to be just comprehensible. Given my law,
I had to find, _first,_ the manner exactly in which snails manifest
their sympathy, the one for the other,--_c'est a dire,_ how Snail A
tells you that something is happening to his comrade, Snail B. There was
a constant law for this, hard to find, but I achieved it. _Second,_
to make my telegraph perfect, and pat my system beyond the touch of
accident, I had to discover how to _destroy_ the _rapport_ between
Snails A and B. Unless I could do this, I could never be sure my
instruments were perfectly isolated, so to speak. 'Twas a difficult
task, Monsieur; for the snail is the most constant in its attachments of
all the animal kingdom, and I have known them to die, time and again,
because their mates had died,--

"'Pining away in a green and yaller melancholie,'

"as your grand poet has it, Monsieur. Still, I succeeded, and I am very
proud to announce it;--'twas a great feat, indeed--no less than to
_subvert an instinct!_ _Third_, I found out the way to keep them
perfectly isolated, so as to prevent any subvention of a