A gentleman once told me that from fright a ring had one day fallen from his finger which at other times he could only remove with difficulty. He had also noticed that his fingers actually grew smaller whenever he experienced strong emotion, thus rendering it easier to take off the ring. The proverb, 'Cold hand, warm heart,’ is the popular expression of the fact that the hands grow cold when the blood, in consequence of an emotion, retreats from the limbs to the heart. CHAPTER VI _THE BEATING OF THE HEART_ I In all ages and by all peoples the heart has been looked upon as the centre of the passions, of feeling and of strength. Our word courage comes from 'cœur’--heart. Nearly two thousand years ago it was proved by physiologists that the heart was not the centre of sensibility, and yet poets and common opinion continue to say that the heart is the most sensitive part of the body. In August 1879 Biffi showed in the Instituto Lombardo the heart of a youth, in the left wall of which, in the autopsy, he had found a needle sticking. The youth, who was of good family, was a poor unfortunate who had killed his father in a fit of insanity, had then tried repeatedly to commit suicide, and at length died mad in the hospital. While he was still living with his family, about two years before his death, he had said that he had stuck a needle into his heart, in order to put an end to his life, but no one believed him. During the whole time which he spent in the hospital the movements of the heart were regular and quiet, the pulse normal, respiration easy, sleep good; he could lie in all positions, and he never complained of any oppression in the region of the heart. When he was dead a needle with a rusted eye was found buried in the flesh and covered with a sheath which had grown around it; the sharp, polished point had penetrated into the cavity of the heart. The irritation caused by the perpetual pricking had produced fleshy excrescences at that point where the heart was continually grazed. This instance shows how insensible the heart is, and yet, in the language of the poets and in the imagination of the people, it will always remain the centre of the passions and of feeling, because during fear, and in the decisive moments of life, we feel it hammering against the walls of the chest like a machine hidden within, the force of its contractions booming and echoing in our ears and head, exciting that strange feeling of oppression which we imagine that this rebellious organ, unchained by a storm of passion, alone produces. The heart is nothing but a force-pump situated in the centre of the blood-vessels, which, by the play of its valves and the contractions of its muscles, keeps up the circulation in arteries and veins, driving the blood into all parts of the body, an arrangement without which life would be impossible. II