lighted. Tables were ranged along the walls of the vault, and upon
these tables were bound down the living bodies of half-dissected
and mutilated animals. Scientific experts were busy at work on
their victims with scalpel, hot iron and forceps. But, as I looked
at the creatures lying bound before them, they no longer appeared
to be mere rabbits, or hounds, for in each I saw a human shape,
the shape of a man, with limbs and lineaments resembling those of
their torturers, hidden within the outward form. And when they
led into the place an old worn-out horse, crippled with age and
long toil in the service of man, and bound him down, and lacerated
his flesh with their knives, I saw the human form within him stir
and writhe as though it were an unborn babe moving in its mother's
womb. And I cried aloud--"Wretches! you are tormenting an unborn man!"
But they heard not, nor could they see what I saw. Then they brought
in a white rabbit, and thrust its eyes through with heated irons.
And as I gazed, the rabbit seemed to me like a tiny infant, with
human face, and hands which stretched themselves towards me in
appeal, and lips which sought to cry for help in human accents.
And I could bear no more, but broke forth into a bitter rain of
tears, exclaiming--"O blind! blind! not to see that you torture a
child, the youngest of your own flesh and blood!"

And with that I woke, sobbing vehemently.

--Paris, Feb. 2, 1880