“However, some experiments are an exception to this--experiments on which I have based my own, wishing to accomplish the greater thing, before successfully accomplishing the lesser, and to graft a fish on a bird before dealing with humanity alone. I say a few experiments. “1. Wiesmann tore from his arm a canary’s feather, which he had transplanted into it a month before, and which left a little bleeding wound. “2. Baronio has grafted the wing of a canary, and the tail of a rat on the comb of a cock. “This was not much, but Nature herself encouraged me. “3. Birds cross without any shame, and produce numerous hybrids, which bear witness to the possibility of fusion between species. “4. Then, getting further away from man, vegetables have considerable plastic force. “Such, reduced to its simplest expression, is the summary of the situation in the presence of which I found myself, and on which I staked all. “I came here to work more comfortably, and almost immediately I performed remarkable operations, which became very famous. One more especially. I wonder if you remember it? “X, the Pickle-King, the American millionaire, had only one ear, and desired to have a pair of them. A poor devil sold him one of his for five thousand dollars. I performed the little ceremony. The grafted ear only died with X two years later, when he succumbed to indigestion. “It was then, when the world was applauding my triumph, and just as the very moment when love, having come on the scene, was urging me to make money, in order that Emma should live a life of luxury--it was just then that I conceived my great idea, which proceeded from this reasoning: “If a millionaire, dissatisfied with his physique, pays five thousand dollars for the pleasure of embellishing it a little, what would he not give for changing it altogether, and acquire a new body for his _ego_, for his brain--a covering full of grace, vigor and youth, in place of an old sickly and repulsive casing! “On the other hand, how many beggars I know would give up their magnificent anatomy for a few years of jollification! “And observe, Nicolas, this purchase of a young body would not only furnish advantages of suppleness, warmth and endurance, but also the enormous advantage that in a youthful _milieu_, the transferred organs are rejuvenated. “Oh! I am not the first to advance this theory, and Paul Bert, admitted the possibility of grafting an organ on several consecutive bodies, as each of these latter grow old, so that by a series of rejuvenations, he foresaw that one might make the same stomach, the same brain _live indefinitely_--as an integral part of successive constitutions. This was tantamount to declaring that a personality can live indefinitely, by a series of incarnations, in a journey through different carcasses, each discarded at the proper moment.