The Pools of Silence. H. De Vere Stacpoole

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СКАЧАТЬ XXV

       TOWARD THE SUNSET

       CHAPTER XXVI

       THE FADING MIST

       CHAPTER XXVII

       I AM THE FOREST

       CHAPTER XXVIII

       GOD SENDS A GUIDE

       CHAPTER XXIX

       THE VISION OF THE POOLS

       CHAPTER XXX

       THE AVENGER

       CHAPTER XXXI

       THE VOICE OF THE FOREST BY NIGHT

       CHAPTER XXXII

       MOONLIGHT ON THE POOLS

       CHAPTER XXXIII

       THE RIVER OF GOLD

       CHAPTER XXXIV

       THE SUBSTITUTE

       CHAPTER XXXV

       PARIS

       CHAPTER XXXVI

       DREAMS

       CHAPTER XXXVII

       BERSELIUS BEHOLDS HIS OTHER SELF

       CHAPTER XXXVIII

       THE REVOLT OF A SLAVE

       CHAPTER XXXIX

       MAXINE

       CHAPTER XL

       PUGIN

       CHAPTER XLI

       THE RETURN OF CAPTAIN BERSELIUS

       CHAPTER XLII

       AMIDST THE LILIES

      PART ONE

CHAPTER I

       Table of Contents

A LECTURE OF THENARD’S

       Table of Contents

      The sun was setting over Paris, a blood-red and violent-looking sun, like the face of a bully staring in at the window of a vast chill room.

      The bank of cloud above the west, corrugated by the wind, seemed not unlike the lowermost slats of a Venetian blind; one might have fancied that a great finger had tilted them up whilst the red, callous, cruel face took a last peep at the frost-bitten city, the frost-bound country—Montmartre and its windows, winking and bloodshot; Bercy and its barges; Notre Dame, where icicles, large as carrots, hung from the lips of the gargoyles, and the Seine clipping the cité and flowing to the clean but distant sea.

      It was the fourth of January and the last day of Félix Thénard’s post-graduate course of lectures at the Beaujon Hospital.

      Post-graduate lectures are intended not for students, using the word in its limited sense, but for fully fledged men who wish for extra training in some special subject, and Thénard, the famous neurologist of the Beaujon, had a class which practically represented the whole continent of Europe and half the world. Men from Vienna and Madrid, Germany and Japan, London and New York, crowded the benches of his lecture room. Even the Republic of Liberia was represented by a large gentleman, who seemed carved from solid night and polished with palm oil.

      Dr. Paul Quincy Adams, one of the representatives of America at the lectures of Thénard, was just reaching the entrance of the Beaujon as the last rays of sunset were touching the heights of Montmartre and the first lamps of Paris were springing alight.

      He had walked all the way from his rooms in the Rue Dijon, for omnibuses were slow and uncomfortable, cabs were dear, and money was, just at present, the most unpleasant thing that money can convert itself into—an object.

      Adams was six feet two, a Vermonter, an American gentleman whose chest measurements were big, almost, as his instincts were fine. He had fought his way up, literally from the soil, putting in terms as seaside café waiter to help to pay his college fees; putting СКАЧАТЬ