“Success! ah! what fine fellows! Who would have imagined that whole bodies had been amputated? and yet, each of them, ever since that day, lives in the carnal abode of his friend. Look!”
He summoned his assistants, and raising their hair, showed the violet colored scar.
The two Germans smiled at one another, and I could not prevent myself from admiring them.
Lerne went on:
“My fortune, then, was made, and at one stroke, I was assuring my own and Emma’s happiness, and her love, which is my most inestimable possession, Nicolas.
“But the discovery, one certain, had to be applied.
“To tell the truth, one dark spot worried me. I mean the influence of the moral side on the physical and vice versa.
“At the end of a few months my patients became modified. If I had endowed their body with a mentality finer than before, the latter ruined the former, and I have seen, amongst others, pigs with a dog’s brain become ill and thin, and die soon.
“On the other hand, intellects coarser than their predecessors, allow themselves to be overcome by the corporal part, and the composite animal then becomes stupider and fatter. That is an invariable rule.
“Sometimes, also, the imperious flesh refashions the mind according to the instincts of brutal matter.