To say why these four personages came into my mind rather than any others, is out of my power; for who can give reasons for what he dreams? All that I can say is that my soul summoned the doctor of Cos, the doctor of Turin, and the famous statesman who did such great things, and committed such grave faults. But as to his graceful friend, I humbly own that it was the OTHER who beckoned her to come. Still, however, when I think of the interview, I am tempted to feel some little pride, for it is evident that in this dream the balance in favor of reason was as four to one. Pretty fair this, methinks, for a lieutenant. However this may be, whilst giving myself up to the reflections I have described, my eyes closed, and I fell fast asleep. But upon shutting my eyes, the image of the personages of whom I had been thinking, remained painted upon that delicate canvas we call memory; and these images, mingling in my brain with the idea of the evocation of the dead, it was not long before I saw advancing in procession Hippocrates, Plato, Pericles, Aspasia, and Doctor Cigna in his bob-wig. I saw them all seat themselves in chairs ranged around the fire. Pericles alone remained standing to read the newspapers. “If the discoveries of which you speak were true,” said Hippocrates to the doctor, “and had they been as useful to the healing art as you affirm, I should have seen the number of those who daily descend to the gloomy realm of Pluto decrease; but the ratio of its inhabitants, according to the registers of Minos which I have myself verified, remains still the same as formerly.” Doctor Cigna turned to me and said: “You have without doubt heard these discoveries spoken of. You know that Harvey discovered the circulation of the blood; that the immortal Spallanzani explained the process of digestion, the mechanism of which is now well understood;” and he entered upon a long detail of all the discoveries connected with physic, and of the host of remedies for which we are indebted to chemistry: in short, he delivered an academical discourse in favor of modern medicine. “But am I to believe,” I replied, “that these great men were ignorant of all you have been telling them, and that their souls, having shuffled off this mortal coil, still meet with any obscurities in nature?”