ank you, sir, for the information that you have given me; it would
furnish an admirable footnote for some Dom Calmet or other, if such
erudite hermits yet exist; but I have had the honor of pointing out to
you that this scrap was in the first instance quite as large as that
map," said Raphael, indicating an open atlas to Lavrille; "but it has
shrunk visibly in three months' time----"

"Quite so," said the man of science. "I understand. The remains of any
substance primarily organic are naturally subject to a process of
decay. It is quite easy to understand, and its progress depends upon
atmospherical conditions. Even metals contract and expand appreciably,
for engineers have remarked somewhat considerable interstices between
great blocks of stone originally clamped together with iron bars. The
field of science is boundless, but human life is very short, so that we
do not claim to be acquainted with all the phenomena of nature."

"Pardon the question that I am about to ask you, sir," Raphael began,
half embarrassed, "but are you quite sure that this piece of skin is
subject to the ordinary laws of zoology, and that it can be stretched?"

"Certainly----oh, bother!----" muttered M. Lavrille, trying to stretch
the talisman. "But if you, sir, will go to see Planchette," he added,
"the celebrated professor of mechanics, he will certainly discover some
method of acting upon this skin, of softening and expanding it."

"Ah, sir, you are the preserver of my life," and Raphael took leave of
the learned naturalist and hurried off to Planchette, leaving the worthy
Lavrille in his study, all among the bottles and dried plants that
filled it up.

Quite unconsciously Raphael brought away with him from this visit,
all of science that man can grasp, a terminology to wit. Lavrille, the
worthy man, was very much like Sancho Panza giving to Don Quixote the
history of the goats; he was entertaining himself by making out a list
of animals and ticking them off. Even now that his life was nearing its
end, he was scarcely acquainted with a mere fraction of the countless
numbers of the great tribes that God has scattered, for some unknown
end, throughout the ocean of worlds.

Raphael was well pleased. "I shall keep my ass well in hand," cried he.
Sterne had said before his day, "Let us take care of our ass, if we wish
to live to old age." But it is such a fantastic brute!

Planchette was a tall, thin man, a poet of a surety, lost in one
co