fixed the image (confused, no doubt, but recognizable since
you have traced the resemblance) upon the retina. A phantom, if you
wish, which is reflected in the dead man's eye."

"And," repeated Bernardet, who wished to be perfectly assured in regard
to the question, "it is not only the image of a living being, it is, to
use your words, the phantom even of a painting which was retained on the
retina?"

"I do not reply to you: 'That is possible!' It is you who say to me: 'I
have seen it!' And you have seen it, in truth, and the form, vague
though it may be, the painted figure permits you to find in a passer-by
the man whose picture the retina had already shown you!"

"Oh! well! Doctor," said the little Bernardet, "I shall tell that, but
they will deny it. They will say that it is impossible!"

Dr. Erwin smiled. He seemed to be looking, with his deep blue eyes, at
some invisible perspective, not bounded by the rooms of little room.

"One has said," he began, "that the word _impossible_ is not French. It
would be more exact to affirm that it was not _human_! We attain a
knowledge of the unknowable. The mysterious is approachable. One must
deny nothing _a priori_; one must believe all things possible and not
only a dream. Search for the truth, the _harsh_ truth, as your Stendhal
said. Well! the word is wrong. One ought to say justly, the _exquisite_
truth, for it is a joy for those who search, that daily life where each
movement marks a step advanced, where the heart beats at the thought of
a rendezvous in the laboratory as at a rendezvous of love. Ah! he is
happy who has given his life to science. He lives in a dream. It is the
poetry, in our times of prose. The dream," continued the young doctor as
in an ecstasy, while Bernardet listened, ravished, "the dream is
everywhere. It is impossible to make it tangible. Thought, human
thought, can sometime be deciphered like an open book. An American
physician asked to be permitted to try an experiment upon the cranium of
a condemned man, still living. Through the cranium he studied the man's
brain. Has not Edison undertaken to give sight to the blind! But, in
order to accomplish all these things, it is necessary, as in primitive
times, to believe, to believe always. The twentieth century will see
many others."

"Ah! Doctor! Doctor!" cried poor little Bernardet, much moved. "I do not
wish to be the ignoramus that I am, the father of a family, who has
mouths to feed, and I beg