“The cries that Doctor Colombat transcribed are of several species and systematically classified.

“There is first the cry determined by the application of fire (PI. I, series A, no. 1), a serious and deep cry running through the interval of a third, followed by the interjection 'ah!'

“There is then the cry determined by the action of a sharp instrument, a very rapid first sound and a very high of the falsetto register on which it extends.

“Nothing is more moving, more terrible than the cry produced by throbbing pain (no. 5). The voice in the high-pitched tremolo is one that the most indifferent man cannot hear without emotion.

“Twice in our life cries of distress of the most heartbreaking effect have struck our ears. The first by a man who voluntarily killed himself, a few years ago, in Versailles, by falling through a window the height of a third floor.

“We passed near the place where he had just come to fall, his fall had been horrible; his limbs were broken: he uttered in a clear and shrill voice a sinister tremolo (no. 6).”

Georges Kastner, The Voices of Paris, 1857