nes where the
dying and the dead are represented; descents from the cross where Christ
is necessarily represented as dead. The idea struck me that I would go
and verify the action of the thumb in these various representations
which the painter's fancy has given us of death.

It was on a Sunday. The Louvre was on my way to the Conservatory,
where, as is well known, I lived as pensioner.

I had often traversed the galleries of the Louvre; but now I was armed
with a criterion that would give my criticisms indisputable authority.

The ignorance of the fact I sought, even among artists of renown, was
not long in being made apparent: all those hands, where they thought
they had depicted death, afforded me nothing but the characteristics of
a more or less peaceful sleep. The correctness of my criticism may be
verified anywhere.

Thus, the mere discovery of a law sufficed to elevate a poor boy of
fifteen years, destitute of all science and deploring the deep ignorance
in which he had hitherto been left, to the height of an infallible
critic in whom the greatest artists found no mercy. I then understood
all the power, all the fertility given by an acquaintance with the laws
that regulate the nature of man, and in how much even genius itself may
be rendered sterile by ignorance of those laws which simple observation
would make them acquainted with. But, I thought, my discovery is not
complete, for if, thanks to it, I have succeeded in proving that all
these pictures of death are false, true only as representing sleep, it
is, on the other hand, impossible for me to prove in how far those
figures live, in which the painter aims to represent life. I must,
therefore, seek the sign of life to complete my standard of criticism.

Suddenly, struck with amazement by the dazzling rays of unexpected
light, I asked myself whether the criterion of death would not reveal to
me, by the law of contraries, the thermometer of life. It should _a
priori_--it does!

Still I felt that it was not here that I might be permitted to
contemplate the vital phenomena attached to the thumb: since death was
so badly rendered here, I had strong reasons for thinking that life was
no better treated.

I left the museum, then, where I had nothing more to learn; and, to
observe living mimetics of the thumb, I went out on the promenade of the
Tuileries thronged by aristocratic people. I carefully examined the
hands of this crowd, but I was not long in discove