“AH! Fleche, my friend, let me tell you the whole story, which makes the odyssey of the late Ulysses pale. You’ve done advanced studies, so you know perfectly well that every single day there is considerable progress in surgery. They can graft kidneys, there are teeth implants, one cuts hair, replaces noses, one sends out essential organs to be repaired, then replaces it like socks in a suitcase. One can lengthen, one pulls, one modifies.”
“Everyone has read in the newspapers, the story of the swede who was too tall and got shortened by 4 inches (actually 4.5 inches) by cutting a bit of each side of his calfs and a little of his thigh (across), then sewed back up. It’s exactly like a sausage where you cut off two slices and stitch it back together. It’s not hard to imagine that my case, perhaps disastrous for the uncultivated, was a piece of cake for the surgeons of the hospital at Aubenas (07).”
“That is absolutely extraordinary” I babbled trying to close my open jaw, completely stupefied by the story.”
“Wait a minute my dear Fleche, unfortunately, that’s not the end of it.”
“After my operation, I was taken back to my bed and it was a long time before I realized the horror of the situation.”
“Maybe it was a joke in very bad taste or simply omission, perhaps jealousy, who knows… whatever, when I came to, I realized that they had grafted two right arms and a left leg, the leg in question belonged, formerly, to an unfortunate citizen of the Congo who died in a fall from a ladder.”
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Well my friends, I have to tell you that our France, once highly regarded in the sciences, in culture, of distinguished international renown, has fallen to a new low… and that’s a fact.
Today, we at le Mouching hesitate between Belgium, the Ukraine and Monaco.
