“I wished to raise my voice against this profanation, this brutality, this sacrilege, but the Shark, biting my ear till it bled, advised me to be calm, resolute, and happy. “ ‘You must not puzzle your brain about the mysteries of clinical surgery,’ said he. {350} “ ‘I have already done that,’ I replied. “ ‘Hush! I am about to describe your case to these gentlemen, who are only too anxious to see you on your legs again. It is necessary they should be made acquainted with the prognostics, diagnostics, the symptomatology, the dietetic and, shall we say, numismatic details, not one of which shall be overlooked. If you are not instantly cured, we will not waste precious time by following in the footsteps of physicians from whom we are separated by the _strictum_ and the _laxum_, humours, mucous membranes, pores, not to name the 66,666 sorts of fever which specially attack the animal organisation. We will not occupy ourselves with Aristotle, Pliny, Ambrose Paré, a miserable idealist, who has said, “I dressed your wounds, but God healed them.” No, that is not our business. Our patron, our hero, is Alexander; our practice, to tighten or relax the tissues—oh no! Alexander knew better than that, he cut them.’ “ ‘Long live Alexander!’ said the Vultures, Rats, and Crows of the audience. “ ‘You have understood me clearly,’ said the speaker. ‘I have now the honour to ask the opinion of the Saw-fish, my colleague, whose doctrines I hold in the highest esteem, although I have my own way of applying them; and now, gentlemen, we will proceed to incise the muscles, saw the bones, and in fact cure our patient,’ “They are bound to kill me, I thought; a thousand times death rather than vivisection.” “And you played the dead Dog?” said the Fox. “Just so, and some good little fellow said that it would be unwise to operate owing to my weakness: it often happens that the most trifling incidents delay the greatest events.” “Say that again,” said the Fox with a tinge of irony, “it seems good.” “Sometimes, sir, the smallest incidents delay the greatest events. It so happened that the orator fell not on the one who had interrupted him, but on his neighbour, whom he accused of lifting the hospital lint and bearing it off to line his nest. “A large Vulture, a provincial student, as might easily be seen from his huge cloak and cap stuck on the back of his head, dared to remark that the profession of surgery was one of liberty, and that professors had no right to interfere in the private affairs of their pupils. In this way the question of the missing lint was satisfactorily disposed of, and the lecturer proceeded. {351} “ ‘Gentlemen, as the operation must be postponed for to-day, permit me, in the interests of science, to make a few remarks on the subject of morals.’ “That was flattering you,” remarked the Fox. “Perhaps it was, at any rate, the little sermon which I here abridge was lost on me.