“Sing one of your morbidities, then,” he said. “Ha! I know! Sing Hamlet that little Danish song. He ought to like that, naturally.” He was suddenly in high good humor.
She went obediently to the piano, took off her long mittens and bracelets (which she handed to Roderick as a matter of course), and sang a sweet, weird melody to Ophelia’s pitiful verses; sang it simply, with a clear, noble voice, the voice of a human being with a great soul.
It affected me, and I think that my emotion was the cause of my curious nervous condition that night.
We retired to our rooms pretty early. My old-looking chamber, with the blackened mahogany furniture, was flooded with moonlight. I had no intention of dreaming thoughts of the day over again all night long, as I have done when sleep has followed some hours’ concentration of thought on one subject; so I had borrowed a book from Sir Roderick—a treatise on “Somnambulism and other irregular manifestations of the Nervous Force,” translated from a work by some Dutch writer, name unknown, which he had spoken of.
Armed with this, I subsided into my feather-bed. (That feather-bed had something to do with what followed, I believe. I here vow myself to further the abolition of feather-beds; they should be taxed, and heavily.) I placed two candles on the little table by my bed, propped myself up against my pillows, and began to read.
The first chapters of the ponderous tome were soon dismissed. Exploded pathology and ancient fallacies filled Part I. of the Dutchman’s treatise. Had I felt at all sleepy, I should have laid down the book there and then, and have chaffed Sir Roderick next day for recommending me such old-fashioned stuff. But I felt absurdly wideawake. So I went on.
The introductory page to Part II. of the volume startled me somewhat. At first I doubted my eyesight. But there, sure enough, were the words—
“ON THE AGE OF SOULS.”
“What does he mean, the fool?” I thought, turning over. I soon knew.
The man, whoever he may have been, believed in that doctrine of transmigration, attributed in its raw state to Pythagoras, who is by some thought to have learnt it from the Egyptians; a fantastic notion which is still believed in by many Easterns, notably by the Buddhists.