212

PART FOUR

XXX. The Avenger 219
XXXI. The Voice of the Forest by Night 230
XXXII. Moonlight on the Pools 236
XXXIII. The River of Gold 245
XXXIV. The Substitute 252
XXXV. Paris 258
XXXVI. Dreams 266
XXXVII. Berselius Beholds His Other Self 273
XXXVIII. The Revolt of a Slave 280
XXXIX. Maxine 283
XL. Pugin 296
XLI. The Return of Captain Berselius 304
XLII. Amidst the Lilies 315

PART ONE

CHAPTER I

A LECTURE OF THENARD'S

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 _cite_ and flowing to the clean
but distant sea.

It was the fourth of January and the last day of Felix Thenard'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 Thenard, 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 Thenard, 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