I ought to have remained faithful to my first intention, and restored your life, immediately after the signature of peace.

But what! Was it well to send you back to France when the sun of your fatherland was obscured by our soldiers and allies?
I have spared you that spectacle--one so grievous to such a soul as yours.

Without doubt you would have had, in March, 1815, the consolation of again seeing that fatal man to whom you had consecrated your devotion; but are you entirely sure that you would not have been swallowed up with his fortune, in the shipwreck of Waterloo?
For five or six years past, it has not been your welfare nor even the welfare of science, that prevented me from reanimating you, it has been....

Forgive me, Colonel, it has been a cowardly attachment to life.
The disorder from which I am suffering, and which will soon carry me off, is an aneurism of the heart; violent emotions are interdicted to me.

If I were myself to undertake the grand operation whose process I have traced in a memorandum annexed to this instrument, I would, without any doubt, succumb before finishing it; my death would be an untoward accident which might trouble my assistants and cause your resuscitation to fail.
Rest content! You will not have long to wait, and, moreover, what do you lose by waiting?
You do not grow old, you are always twenty-four years of age; your children are growing up, you will be almost their contemporary when you come to life again.