"Indeed, monsieur," I said to my neighbour, "you make my head reel. You know so much and you talk so well, I feel carried away by all you tell me, like a leaf by a whirlwind. You spoke of a tiny animal that you discovered--an ephemera: do you call that a rotifer?" "Yes." "Did you discover it in water, in wine or in vinegar?" "In wet sand." "How did it come about?" "Oh! why, in a very simple way. I had begun making microscopic experiments upon infinitely small things, long before Raspail. One day, when I had examined under the microscope water, wine, vinegar, cheese, bread, all the ingredients in fact that experiments are usually made upon, I took a little wet sand out of my rain gutter,--I then lodged on a sixth floor,--I put it on the slide of my microscope and applied my eye to the lens. Then I saw a strange animal move about, in shape like a velocipede, furnished with two wheels, which it moved very rapidly. If it had a river to cross, these wheels served the same purpose as those of a steamboat; had it dry land to go over, the wheels acted the same as those of a tilbury. I watched it, I studied its every detail, I drew it. Then I suddenly remembered that my rotifer,--I had christened it by that name, although I have since called it a _tarentatello_>--I suddenly remembered that my rotifer had made me forget an engagement. I was in a great hurry; I had an appointment with one of the animalculæ which do not like being kept waiting--an ephemera whom mortals call a woman.... I left my microscope, my rotifer and the pinch of sand which was his world. I had other work to do where I went, protracted and engaging work, which kept me all the night. I did not get back until the next morning: I went straight to my microscope. Alas! the sand had dried up during the night, and my poor rotifer, which needed moisture, no doubt, to live, had died. Its almost imperceptible body was stretched on its left side, its wheels were motionless, the steamboat puffed no longer, the velocipede had stopped." "Ah! poor rotifer!" I exclaimed. "Wait, wait!" "Ah! was it like Lord Ruthven, then? He was not dead? Was he, like Lord Ruthven, a vampire?"