If the mutilated and half-devoured bodies that lay before me, filled me
with horror and disgust, they, at least, left within me a faint
lingering hope surviving death; but the state of blindness of those
souls who have lost consciousness of their being and even the feeling of
their existence, the shadowy abyss into which they allow themselves
complaisantly to glide, the nullity which they adorn with the title of
science,--all this filled me with fright, for I felt the doubt and
despair into which contact with it would inevitably have plunged me,
if, by a special favor, the tone and mimetics, alike self-sufficient and
mocking, of these free-thinkers, as they are now styled, had not, from
the first, inspired me with aversion for them and a salutary hatred of
their doctrine.
And yet, amidst so many repulsive objects, the faculty of observation to
which I already owed such fruitful remarks was not dormant in me: I had
already asked myself by what evident sign one could recognize a recent
corpse.
From this point of view, I made a rapid exploration, and I questioned
the various corpses left almost intact; I sought in some portion of the
body, common to all, a form or a sign invariably found in all.
The hand furnished me that sign and responded fully to my question.
I noticed, in fact, that in all these corpses the thumb exhibited a
singular attitude--that of adduction or attraction inward, which I had
never noted either in persons waking or sleeping.
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