The Lock and Key Library: Classic Mystery and Detective Stories: Old Time English
General
The Lock and Key Library: Classic Mystery and Detective Stories: Old Time English
Detective and mystery stories; Fiction; Ghost stories
"And looking toward the Jacobins Convent (of which, from his
chamber, he could see the spires and trees), this man WILLED. And
it was not yet dawn. And he willed; and one who was lying in his
cell in the convent of Jacobins, awake and shuddering with terror
for a crime which he had committed, fell asleep.
"But though he was asleep his eyes were open.
"And after tossing and writhing, and clinging to the pallet, and
saying 'No, I will not go,' he rose up and donned his clothes--a
gray coat, a vest of white pique, black satin small-clothes, ribbed
silk stockings, and a white stock with a steel buckle; and he
arranged his hair, and he tied his queue, all the while being in
that strange somnolence which walks, which moves, which FLIES
sometimes, which sees, which is indifferent to pain, which OBEYS.
And he put on his hat, and he went forth from his cell: and though
the dawn was not yet, he trod the corridors as seeing them. And he
passed into the cloister, and then into the garden where lie the
ancient dead. And he came to the wicket, which Brother Jerome was
opening just at the dawning. And the crowd was already waiting
with their cans and bowls to receive the alms of the good brethren.
"And he passed through the crowd and went on his way, and the few
people then abroad who marked him, said, 'Tiens! How very odd he
looks! He looks like a man walking in his sleep!' This was said
by various persons:--
"By milk women, with their cans and carts, coming into the town.
"By roysterers who had been drinking at the taverns of the Barrier,
for it was Mid-Lent.
"By the sergeants of the watch, who eyed him sternly as he passed
near their halberds.
"But he passed on unmoved by their halberds,
"Unmoved by the cries of the roysterers,
"By the market women coming with their milk and eggs.
"He walked through the Rue St. Honore, I say:--
"By the Rue Rambuteau,
"By the Rue St. Antoine,
"By the King's Chateau of the Bastille,
"By the Faubourg St. Antoine.
"And he came to No. 29 in the Rue Picpus--a house which then stood
between a court and garden--
"That is, there was a building of one story, with a great coach
door.
"Then there was a court, around which were stables, coach-houses,
offices.
"Then there was a house--a two-storied house, with a perron in
front.
"Behind the house was a garden--a garden of two hundred and fifty
French feet in length.
"And as one hundred feet of France equal one hundred and six feet
of England, this garden, my friend, equaled exactly two hundred and
sixty-five feet of British measure.
"In the center of the garden was a fountain and a statue--or, to
speak more correctly, two statues. One was recumbent,--a man.
Over him, saber in hand, stood a Woman.
"The man was Olofernes. The woman was Judith. From the head, from
the trunk, the water gushed. It was the taste of the doctor:--was
it not a droll of taste?
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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