New Bodies for Old

I conceived it under the inspiration of ideas that you cherish, and I could have wished that it had come nearer to your own works than it does, not in merit--that would be an absurd pretension--but, at any rate, in that pleasant quality shown in all your books, which allows the chastest minds, as well as those that exact the greatest realism, to have communion with your genius--a communion which the ablest people of our time can acknowledge without feeling its charm lessened by such considerations.

But when Fortune for good or ill allowed me to discover the subject of this allegorical novel, I felt bound not to set it aside because of a few audacities which a faithful rendering involved and which an arrest of development alone--that is, a crime against the literary conscience--could avoid.

You now know--you could have guessed as much--what I should like people to think of my work, if by chance any one did it the unexpected honor of thinking about it at all. Far from desiring to arouse the creature of instinct in my reader and amuse him with scandalous descriptions, my work is addressed to the philosopher anxious for Truth amid the marvels of Fiction and for Orderliness amid the tumult of imaginary Adventures.

That, Sir, is why I beg you to accept it.

M. R.

CONTENTS

PAGE

INTRODUCTION 9

CHAPTER

I NOCTURNE 16

II AMONG THE SPHINXES 38

III THE CONSERVATORY 65

IV HOT AND COLD 84

V “THE MADMAN” 101

VI NELL--THE ST. BERNARD 117

VII THUS SPAKE MLLE. BOURDICHET 136

VIII RASHNESS 154

IX THE AMBUSH 171

X THE CIRCEEAN OPERATION 192

XI IN THE PADDOCK 217

XII LERNE CHANGES HIS METHOD OF ATTACK 235

XIII EXPERIMENTS! HALLUCINATIONS! 253

XIV DEATH AND THE MASK 262

XV THE NEW BEAST 279

XVI THE WIZARD FINALLY DIES 300

NEW BODIES FOR OLD

NEW BODIES FOR OLD

INTRODUCTION

It all happened on a certain winter evening more than a year ago, after the last men’s dinner-party I gave to my friends in the little house which I had taken furnished in the Avenue Victor Hugo.

As my projected move was nothing more than the gratification of my vagrant fancy, we had celebrated my house-unwarming as joyfully as we had celebrated the warming of yore, and the time for liqueurs having come (and also the time for jokes) each of us did his best to shine--more especially of course, that naughty fellow Gilbert, Marlotte, our paradoxical friend, the “Triboulet” of our band, and Cardaillac, our licensed wizard.

I cannot remember now exactly how it came about, but after an hour spent in the smoking-room, somebody switched off the electric light, and urged us to have some table-turning; so we grouped ourselves in the darkness round a little table. This “somebody” (please observe) was not Cardaillac; but perhaps he was in league with Cardaillac--if indeed Cardaillac was the guilty party.

We were exactly eight men in all, eight skeptics versus a little insignificant table which had only one stem divided off at the end into three legs, and whose round top bent under our sixteen hands placed on it in accordance with occult rites!

It was Mariotte who instructed us in these rites. He had at one time been an anxious inquirer about witchcraft, and familiar with table-turning, though merely as an outsider, and as he was our customary buffoon, when we saw him assume the direction of the séance, every one just let himself go in anticipation of some excellent clowning.

Cardaillac found himself my right-hand neighbor. I heard him stifle a laugh in his throat and cough. Then the table began to turn.