wanted, immersed in study, in that solitary place. It is
my rule never to make unnecessary mysteries, and never to set people
suspecting me for want of a little seasonable candour on my part. Mrs.
Michelson believed in me from first to last. This ladylike person
(widow of a Protestant priest) overflowed with faith. Touched by such
superfluity of simple confidence in a woman of her mature years, I
opened the ample reservoirs of my nature and absorbed it all.

I was rewarded for posting myself sentinel at the lake by the
appearance--not of Anne Catherick herself, but of the person in charge
of her. This individual also overflowed with simple faith, which I
absorbed in myself, as in the case already mentioned. I leave her to
describe the circumstances (if she has not done so already) under which
she introduced me to the object of her maternal care. When I first saw
Anne Catherick she was asleep. I was electrified by the likeness
between this unhappy woman and Lady Glyde. The details of the grand
scheme which had suggested themselves in outline only, up to that
period, occurred to me, in all their masterly combination, at the sight
of the sleeping face. At the same time, my heart, always accessible to
tender influences, dissolved in tears at the spectacle of suffering
before me. I instantly set myself to impart relief. In other words, I
provided the necessary stimulant for strengthening Anne Catherick to
perform the journey to London.

The best years of my life have been passed in the ardent study of
medical and chemical science. Chemistry especially has always had
irresistible attractions for me from the enormous, the illimitable
power which the knowledge of it confers. Chemists--I assert it
emphatically--might sway, if they pleased, the destinies of humanity.
Let me explain this before I go further.

Mind, they say, rules the world. But what rules the mind? The body
(follow me closely here) lies at the mercy of the most omnipotent of
all potentates--the Chemist. Give me--Fosco--chemistry; and when
Shakespeare has conceived Hamlet, and sits down to execute the
conception--with a few grains of powder dropped into his daily food, I
will reduce his mind, by the action of his body, till his pen pours out
the most abject drivel that has ever degraded paper. Under similar
circumstances, revive me the illustrious Newton. I guarantee that when
he sees the apple fall he shall EAT IT, instead of discovering the