Dupre of Paris. This physician told me
that by his process the body would, without the peculiarly-sealed
coffin used by the Swiss embalmers, last 'firm and white as Carrara
marble for a thousand years.'
The people at the chalet had naturally been much astonished to find
upon my father's breast a jewelled cross lying. As soon as I entered
the house they handed it to me.
For some reason or another this amulet and the curse had haunted my
imagination as much as if I believed in amulets and curses, though my
reason told me that everything of the kind was sheer nonsense. I
could not sleep for thinking about it, and in the night I rose from
my bed, and, opening the window, held up the cross in the moonlight.
The facets caught the silvery rays and focussed them. The amulet
seemed to shudder with some prophecy of woe. It was now that, for the
first time, I began to feel the signs of that great struggle between
reason and the inherited instinct of superstition which afterwards
played so important a part in my life. I then took up the parchment
scroll, and opened it and re-read the curse.
Pages:
144
145
146
147
148
149
150
151
152
153
154
155
156
157
158
159
160
161
162
163
164
165
166
167
168