M. Morin's face still bore its sceptical smile. But after all, the Examining Magistrate was master of the situation, and since young Dr. Erwin brought the result of the Denmark experiment--a contribution new in these researches--to add weight to the matter, the Professor requested that he should not be asked to lend himself to an experiment which he declared in advance would be a perfectly useless one. There was a photographic apparatus at the Morgue as at the Préfecture, used for anthropometry. Bernardet, moreover, had his kodak in his hand. One could photograph the retina as soon as the membrane was separated from the eye by the autopsy, and when, like the wing of a butterfly, it had been fastened to a piece of cork. And while Bernardet was accustomed to all the horrors of crime, yet he felt his heart beat almost to suffocation during this operation. He noticed that M. Ginory became very pale, and that he bit his lips, casting occasional pitying glances toward the dead man. On the contrary, the young men bent over the body and studied it with the admiration and joy of treasure seekers digging in a mine. Each human fibre seemed to reveal to them some new truth. They were like jewelers before a casket full of gems, and what they studied, weighed, examined, was a human corpse. And when those eyes, living, terrible, accusing, were removed, leaving behind them two empty orbits, the Professor suddenly spoke with marvelous eloquence, flowing and picturesque, as if he were speaking of works of art. And it was, in truth, a work of art, this wonderful mechanism which he explained to his students, who listened eagerly to each word. It was a work of art, this eye, with its sclerotic, its transparent cornea, its aqueous and vitreous humor, its crystalline lens, and the retina, like a photographic plate in that black chamber in which the luminous rays reflect, reversed, the objects seen. And M. Morin, holding between his fingers the object which he was demonstrating, spoke of the membrane formed of fibres and of the terminal elements of the optic nerve, as a professor of painting or of sculpture speaks of a gem chased by a Benvenuto.