All friends of humanity will doubtless comprehend that I could not hesitate long.
I had Sergeant Garok called, and I begged him to sell me the body of the Colonel.

It was not the first time that I had bought a corpse for dissection, so my request excited no suspicion.

The bargain concluded, I gave him four bottles of kirsch-wasser, and soon two Russian soldiers brought me Colonel Fougas on a stretcher.
As soon as I was alone with him, I pricked one of his fingers: pressure forced out a drop of blood.

To place it under a microscope between two plates of glass was the work of a minute.

Oh, joy! The fibrin was not coagulated.