"But in 1877, the very learned Doyen of the Academy of Medicine, M. Brouardel, whose great wisdom, and whose sovereign opinion was law, one of those men who is an honor to his country, told me that when he was in Heidelberg he had heard Professor Kuhne say that he had studied this same question; he had made impressions of the retina of the eye in the following cases: After the death of a dog or a wolf, he had taken out the eye and replaced it with the back part of the eye in front; then he took a very strong light and placed it in front of the eye and between the eye and the light he placed a small grating. This grating, after an exposure of a quarter of an hour, was visible upon the retina. But those are very different experiments from the ones one hears of in America." "They could see the bars in the grating? If that was visible, why could not the visage of the murderer be found there?" "Eh! Other experiments have been attempted, even after those of which Professor Kuhne told our compatriot. Every one, you understand, has borne only negative results, and M. Brouardel could tell you, better than I, that in the physiological and oculistic treatises, published during the last ten years, no allusion has been made to the preservation of the image on the retina after death. It is an _affair classé_, Bernardet." "Ah! Monsieur, yet"--and the police officer hesitated. Shaking his head, he again repeated: "Yet--yet!" "You are not convinced?" "No, Monsieur Ginory, and shall I tell you why? You, yourself, in spite of the testimony of illustrious savants, still doubt. I pray you to pardon me, but I see it in your eyes." "That is still another way to use the retina," said Ginory, laughing. "You read one's thoughts." "No, Monsieur, but you are a man of too great intelligence to say to yourself that there is nothing in this world _classé_, that every matter can be taken up again. The idea has come to me to try the experiment if I am permitted. Yes, Monsieur, those eyes, did you see them, the eyes of the dead man? They seemed to speak; they seemed to see. Their expression is of lifelike intensity. They see, I tell you, they see! They perceive something which we cannot see, and which is frightful. They bear--and no one can convince me to the contrary--they bear on the retina the reflection of the last being whom the murdered man saw before he died. They keep it still, they still retain that image. They are going to hold an autopsy; they will tell us that the throat is cut. Eh! Parbleu! We know it well. We see it for ourselves. Moniche, the porter, knows it as well as any doctor. But when one questions those eyes, when one searches in that black chamber where the image appears as on a plate, when one demands of those eyes their secret, I am convinced that one will find it." "You are obstinate, Bernardet."