was much the worse. Indeed, a very neat and pleasant little woman
with the key of her lodging on her forefinger, who had been showing
him to her little girl while she and the child ate sweetmeats,
observed monsieur looking poorly as we came out together, and asked
monsieur, with her wondering little eyebrows prettily raised, if
there were anything the matter? Faintly replying in the negative,
monsieur crossed the road to a wine-shop, got some brandy, and
resolved to freshen himself with a dip in the great floating bath
on the river.
The bath was crowded in the usual airy manner, by a male population
in striped drawers of various gay colours, who walked up and down
arm in arm, drank coffee, smoked cigars, sat at little tables,
conversed politely with the damsels who dispensed the towels, and
every now and then pitched themselves into the river head foremost,
and came out again to repeat this social routine. I made haste to
participate in the water part of the entertainments, and was in the
full enjoyment of a delightful bath, when all in a moment I was
seized with an unreasonable idea that the large dark body was
floating straight at me.
I was out of the river, and dressing instantly. In the shock I had
taken some water into my mouth, and it turned me sick, for I
fancied that the contamination of the creature was in it. I had
got back to my cool darkened room in the hotel, and was lying on a
sofa there, before I began to reason with myself.
Of course, I knew perfectly well that the large dark creature was
stone dead, and that I should no more come upon him out of the
place where I had seen him dead, than I should come upon the
cathedral of Notre-Dame in an entirely new situation. What
troubled me was the picture of the creature; and that had so
curiously and strongly painted itself upon my brain, that I could
not get rid of it until it was worn out.
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Dickens, Charles – The Uncommercial Traveller
I noticed the peculiarities of this possession, while it was a real
discomfort to me. That very day, at dinner, some morsel on my
plate looked like a piece of him, and I was glad to get up and go
out. Later in the evening, I was walking along the Rue St. Honore,
when I saw a bill at a public room there, announcing small-sword
exercise, broad-sword exercise, wrestling, and other such feats. I
went in, and some of the sword-play being very skilful, remained.
A specimen of our own national sport, The British Boaxe, was
announced to be given at the close of the evening. In an evil
hour, I determined to wait for this Boaxe, as became a Briton. It
was a clumsy specimen (executed by two English grooms out of
place), but one of the combatants, receiving a straight righthander
with the glove between his eyes, did exactly what the large
dark creature in the Morgue had seemed going to do – and finished
me for that night.
There was rather a sickly smell (not at all an unusual fragrance in
Paris) in the little ante-room of my apartment at the hotel. The
large dark creature in the Morgue was by no direct experience
associated with my sense of smell, because, when I came to the
knowledge of him, he lay behind a wall of thick plate-glass as good
as a wall of steel or marble for that matter. Yet the whiff of the
room never failed to reproduce him. What was more curious, was the
capriciousness with which his portrait seemed to light itself up in
my mind, elsewhere. I might be walking in the Palais Royal, lazily
enjoying the shop windows, and might be regaling myself with one of
the ready-made clothes shops that are set out there. My eyes,
wandering over impossible-waisted dressing-gowns and luminous
waistcoats, would fall upon the master, or the shopman, or even the
very dummy at the door, and would suggest to me, ‘Something like
him!’ – and instantly I was sickened again.
This would happen at the theatre, in the same manner. Often it