Dr. Jaquet, too, had, like Professor Dean, his hobby, and this hobby was the subject of suspended animation. He was a Frenchman some fifty years of age, short and spare of figure, with a complexion dark as if stained with walnut juice, and very black and very curly hair, lightly streaked with gray. He spoke with great volubility, in quick, jerky little sentences whose peculiar idiomatic twists suggested a direct translation from his native French. Upon one occasion, they visited his cottage and he showed them different animals, apparently sound asleep, which he declared were in various stages of suspended animation. He pointed out a peacefully sleeping dog, and explained that it had been in this condition for sixty-five days without a particle of food or drop of liquid. He also exhibited a rabbit which had been in the same state for four months. All he had to do, the Doctor declared, was to restore them to wakefulness and they would promptly resume their normal condition. Mr. Kearns failed to restrain a mild expression of his skepticism; but the Doctor’s voluble protestations forced him to accept the statement of their condition, though he still maintained the animals could either not be aroused at all, or else would drop dead as soon as awakened. The Doctor promptly awakened the rabbit. The animal seemed at first slightly lethargic and dazed, but it quickly vindicated the Doctor’s claims by cavorting about its cage and then falling to work, in a businesslike way, upon a proffered lettuce leaf. Doctor Jaquet was enthusiastic on the subject of hibernation, pointing with pride to the achievements in this direction of snakes and many animals, which were known to live to great ages. He declared his conviction that in suspended animation could be found an excellent cure for many diseases, notably troubles of the digestive tract; that during the period of suspension Nature, freed from the necessity of performing her ordinary routine functions, would be given an opportunity of making her own cure. In a word, suspended animation was, according to Dr. Jaquet, the great and true panacea for most of the evils with which mortality was afflicted. “You mean,” questioned Mr. Kearns, after Dr. Jaquet had launched out into his favorite discussion as a sequel to the resurrection of the rabbit, “if a man has trouble with his liver, or a pain in his stomach, instead of giving him a pill, or other dose, you would suspend him?” “That which you say there has reason!” replied the Doctor in his peculiar phraseology. But Mr. Kearns’ manner indicated his skepticism and the Doctor seemed quite piqued. “And how do you bring about this condition of suspended animation?” asked Mr. Kearns. “I put them to sleep. I can make sleep any person--all the world!” declared the little Doctor with conviction. Mr. Kearns smiled. “Ah! You doubt it?” asked the Doctor. “Could you put me to sleep, for instance?” inquired Mr. Kearns, parrying the question.