ellow must have buried a host of patients," I said to my neighbour
the attorney.

"I would not trust him with my dog," was the answer.

"I hate him--I can't help it," I said.

"I despise him."

"No--you're wrong there," I replied.

"And did you also dream of a queen?" enquired Beaumarchais.

"No! I dreamt of a people," he answered with an emphasis that made us
laugh. "I had to cut off a patient's leg on the following day, and"--

"And you found the people in his leg?" asked M. de Calonne.

"Exactly," replied the surgeon.

"He's quite amusing," tittered the Countess de G----.

"I was rather astonished, I assure you," continued the man, without
minding the sneers and interruptions he met with, "to find any thing to
speak to in that leg. I had the extraordinary faculty of entering into my
patient. When I found myself, for the first time, in his skin, I saw an
immense quantity of little beings, which moved about, and thought, and
reasoned. Some lived in the man's body, and some in his mind. His ideas
were living things, which were born, grew up, and died. They were ill and
well, lively, sorrowful; and in short had each their own characteristics.
They quarrelled, or were friendly with each other. Some of these ideas
forced their way out, and went to inhabit the intellectual world; for I
saw at a glance that there were two worlds--the visible and the invisible,
and that earth, like man, had a body and soul. Nature laid itself bare to
me; and I perceived its immensity, by seeing the ocean of beings who were
spread every where, making the whole one mass of animated matter, from the
marbles up to God. It was a noble sight! In short, there was a universe in
my patient. When I inserted the knife in his gangrened leg I annihilated
millions of those beings. You laugh, ladies, to think you are possessed by
animals."

"Don't be personal," sneered M. de Calonne--"speak for yourself and your
patient."

"He, poor man, was so frightened by the cries of those animals, and
suffered such torture, that he tried to interrupt the operation. But I
persevered, and I told him that those noxious animals were actually
gnawing his bones. He made a movement, and the knife hurt my own side."

"He is an ass," said Lavoisier.

"No--he is only drunk," replied Beaumarchais.

"But, gentlemen, my dream has a meaning in it," cried the surgeon.

"Oh! oh!" exclaimed Bodard, who awoke at the moment--"my leg's asleep."

"Your animals are dead,