“Stop an instant, master,” interrupted Marat with his viper-like smile: “let us come to an understanding and not exaggerate; we surgical operators are rather materialists.”
“These bodies are quite cold,” mused Balsamo aloud, “and this woman was good-looking. A fine soul must have dwelt in that fine temple.”
“There was the mistake—it was a vile blade of metal in that showy scabbard. This body, master, is that of a drab who was taken from the Magdalen Prison of St. Lazare where she died of brain fever, to the Main Hospital. Her story is very scandalous and long. If you call her moving impulse a soul, you do ours wrong.”
“The soul might have been healed and it was lost, because no physician for the soul came along.”
“Alas, master, this is another of your theories. Only for bodies are there medicines,” sneered Marat with a bitter laugh. “You use words which are a reflection of a part of ‘Macbeth,’ and it makes you smile. Who can minister to a mind diseased? Shakespeare calls your ‘sou’ the mind.”
“No, you are wrong, and you do not know why I smile. For the moment we are to conclude that these earthly vessels are empty?”
“And senseless,” went on Marat, raising the head of the woman and letting it fall down on the slab with a bang, without the remains shuddering or moving.
“Very well: let us go to the hospital now,” said Balsamo.
“Not until I have cut off the head and put it by, as this coveted head is the seat of a curious malady.”
He opened his instrument-case, took out a bistory, and picked up in a corner a mallet spotted with blood. With a skilled hand he traced a circular incision separating all the flesh and neck muscles. Cleaving to the spine, he thrust his steel between two joints and gave with the maul a sharp, forcible rap. The head rolled on the table, and bounced to the ground. Marat was obliged to pick it up with his moistened hands. Balsamo turned his head not to fill the operator with too much delight.