80 LIFE OF ELIE METCHNIKOFF 



came to bring religious comfort and to exhort him 

 to look there for consolation. Metchnikoff thanked 

 him, but firmly assured him that it was not possible 

 to him. 



The funeral took place two days later ; he did not 

 attend it and did not see the corpse. Immediately 

 after the funeral he left Madeira with his sister-in-law. 

 Being no longer anxious to economise, he took with 

 him a sick young Russian who wished to see his mother 

 again and could not afford the journey. 



After the catastrophe, Metchnikoff felt incapable 

 of thinking of the future, his life seemed cut off at one 

 /blow ; he destroyed his papers and reserved a phial 

 I of morphia, without any settled intention. They 

 journeyed back through Spain ; it was during the 

 Carlist insurrection, and several episodes on the way 

 distracted their attention. Elie and his sister-in- 

 law reached Geneva, where they found Leo Metch- 

 nikoff and several relations, among whom he seems 

 to have recovered himself. He even related some of 

 their travelling experiences, meetings with Carlists, 

 frontier incidents, etc., with some spirit. But his 

 apparent calm concealed black despair. 



He said to himself : " Why live ? My private 

 life is ended ; my eyes are going ; when I am blind 

 I can no longer work, then why live ? " Seeing no 

 issue to his situation, he absorbed the morphia. He 

 did not know that too strong a dose, by provoking 

 vomiting, eliminates the poison. Such was the case 

 with him. He fell into a sort of torpor, of extra- 

 ordinary comfort and absolute rest ; in spite of this 

 comatose state he remained conscious and felt no 

 fear of death. When he became himself again, it 

 was with a feeling of dismay. He said to himself that 



