have seen
something--yes, I have seen with a magnifying glass, while studying
thoroughly the proof given to the society and reproduced in the bulletin
of Volume I., No. 2, of 1870; I have seen deciphered the image which Dr.
Bourion saw, and which Dr. Vernois did not see. Ah! it was confused, the
proof was hazy. It was scarcely recognizable, I confess. But there are
mirrors which are not very clear and which reflect clouded vision;
nevertheless, the image is there. And I have seen, or what one calls
seen, the phantom of the murderer which Dr. Bourion saw, and which
escaped the eyes of the member of the Academy of Medicine and of the
Hygiene Council, Honorary Physician of the Hospital, if you please."

M. Ginory, who had listened to the officer with curiosity, began to
laugh, and remarked to Bernardet that, according to this reasoning,
illustrated medical science would find itself sacrificed to the
instinct, the divination of a provincial physician, and that it was only
too easy to put the Academicians in the wrong and the Independents in
the right.

"Oh, Monsieur, pardon; I put no one in the right or wrong. Dr. Bourion
believed that he had made a discovery. Dr. Vernois was persuaded that
Dr. Bourion had discovered nothing at all. Each had the courage of his
conviction. What I contest is that, for twenty-six years, no one has
experimented, no one has made any researches, since the first
experiment, and that Dr. Bourion's communication has been simply dropped
and forgotten."

"I ask your pardon in my turn, Bernardet," replied M. Ginory, a little
quizzically. "I have also studied the question, which seems to me a
curious"----

"Have you photographed any yourself, M. Ginory?"

"No."

"Ah! There is where the proof is."

"But in 1877, the very learned Doyen of the Academy of Medicine, M.
Brouardel, whose great wisdom, and whose sovereign opinion was law, one
of those men who is an honor to his country, told me that when he was in
Heidelberg he had heard Professor Kuhne say that he had studied this
same question; he had made impressions of the retina of the eye in the
following cases: After the death of a dog or a wolf, he had taken out
the eye and replaced it with the back part of the eye in front; then he
took a very strong light and placed it in front of the eye and between
the eye and the light he placed a small grating. This grating, after an
exposure of a quarter of an hour, was visible upon the retina. But thos