“Indeed?” said Monte Cristo; “so this gentleman is an Academician?”

“Within the last week he has been made one of the learned assembly.”

“And what is his especial talent?”

“His talent? I believe he thrusts pins through the heads of rabbits, he makes fowls eat madder, and punches the spinal marrow out of dogs with whalebone.”

“And he is made a member of the Academy of Sciences for this?”

“No; of the French Academy.”

“But what has the French Academy to do with all this?”

“I was going to tell you. It seems⁠—”

“That his experiments have very considerably advanced the cause of science, doubtless?”