Before I leave my friend the American, whom I have provisionally identified with the doctor, Francis Schlatter, I must relate some incidents which increase the suspicion that this man had a "double."
When we recently renewed our acquaintanceship, I told him exactly all my opinions on the subject, and showed him the number of the Revue Spirite in which was the article "My friend H." He appeared undecided, but inclined to be sceptical.
After some days, when he came to dinner, he was quite disturbed, and related, with a good deal of emotion, that his mistress had disappeared without leaving any information, and without bidding him farewell. She remained some days absent and then returned. On being questioned, she acknowledged that she was afraid of her master, for whom she acted as housekeeper. Further questioning elicited the fact that once when she awoke in the night, and he was asleep, his face appeared as white as chalk and irrecognisable, and this frightened her indescribably.
Moreover, he said, he did not dare to go to sleep before midnight, for if he did he was tortured as though he were stuck on a roasting skewer which turned him slowly round, so that he had to leave his bed.
When he had read my book, Inferno, he said—
"You have not had a persecution mania, but have been persecuted, though not by men."
Stimulated by my related experiences, he began to search in his memory, and imparted to me some inexplicable incidents of his life during the last few years. For instance, there was a certain spot on the Pont Saint-Michel where a rheumatic pain in his leg always obliged him to stand. This occurred regularly, and he had caused his friends to witness it He had also noticed many other strange incidents, and had learnt to say "punished."
"If I smoke, I am punished; and if I drink absinthe, I am punished."
One evening when we had met, but it was not yet midnight, we entered the Café de la Fregata in the Rue du Bac. Talking energetically, we took the first place that offered, and asked for absinthe. The conversation continued, but all of a sudden my companion stopped and, looking round him, broke out, "Have you ever seen such a collection of bandits? They are all criminal types."