After this reply, Brisset looked, without speaking, at a middle-sized
person, whose darkly flushed countenance and glowing eyes seemed to
belong to some antique satyr; and who, leaning his back against the
corner of the embrasure, was studying Raphael, without saying a word.
Doctor Cameristus, a man of creeds and enthusiasms, the head of the
"Vitalists," a romantic champion of the esoteric doctrines of Van
Helmont, discerned a lofty informing principle in human life, a
mysterious and inexplicable phenomenon which mocks at the scalpel,
deceives the surgeon, eludes the drugs of the pharmacopoeia, the
formulae of algebra, the demonstrations of anatomy, and derides all
our efforts; a sort of invisible, intangible flame, which, obeying
some divinely appointed law, will often linger on in a body in our
opinion devoted to death, while it takes flight from an organization
well fitted for prolonged existence.
A bitter smile hovered upon the lips of the third doctor, Maugredie, a
man of acknowledged ability, but a Pyrrhonist and a scoffer, with the
scalpel for his one article of faith. He would consider, as a
concession to Brisset, that a man who, as a matter of fact, was
perfectly well was dead, and recognize with Cameristus that a man
might be living on after his apparent demise.
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