The Weird Adventures of Professor Delapine of the Sorbonne

by G. Lindsay Johnson

In spite of the fact that he was dead tired with the excitement and horror of the recent events, his mind was so distracted that he could not sleep. Although his body was weary, his thoughts became abnormally active, and he kept tossing in bed, and turning over in his mind the strange events he had witnessed.

"Happy Delapine," he said with a sigh, "Death indeed is the only evil that can never touch us. When we are, death is not. When death comes, we are not, Yes, Cicero was right when he said, 'Death is an event either to be entirely disregarded, if it extinguish the soul's existence, or, much to be wished, if it convey it to some region where it shall continue to exist forever.' What then have I to fear, if after death I shall either not be miserable, or shall certainly be happy?"

His thoughts carried him back to the beautiful Greek conception of death with its white marble tomb, and the mourners dressed in pure white, carrying garlands of flowers, and chanting some soul-stirring refrain accompanied by maidens playing on the harp and lute. He compared it with a shudder to the gruesome pictures of the Middle Ages, which he remembered to have seen in the frescoes of Orcagna on the walls of the Campo Santo in Pisa, which depicted the dying souls of the damned thrust into the pit of Hell by devils, or the souls of the saved (!) writhing in the flames of Purgatory, and whose torments could alone be alleviated by donations deposited in the money box by their friends on earth.

The moon's rays shining through the window shed a soft light through the room, and illuminated the wax-like features of the professor.

Once or twice Riche raising himself up in bed thought he saw a faint twitching in Delapine's fingers, but after gazing intently at them he lay down again convinced that he had been deceived.

Strange thoughts flitted through his mind. How very different would have been his life during the past week, he said to himself, had Villebois not met him at the café at the corner of the Boulevard S. Michel. What would he be doing now? Perhaps sleeping in his hotel in the Rue de Rivoli, perhaps risking a handful of louis on the green tables of the Casino, but almost certainly not tossing on a bed by the side of a corpse.

The room felt uncanny. He had long been familiar with death in all its forms. He had been surgeon in two campaigns in the north of Africa, and had seen his comrades die like flies around him from dysentery and cholera. He had seen their bodies thrown into pits a hundred at a time, but never had he felt such a feeling of awe and terror steal over him as he felt to-night. He could not account for it. Delapine would not needlessly hurt a fly, and now he was lying in the cold hands of death.

At length he could stand it no longer, and getting up he dressed himself and paced up and down the room.

Again he gazed intently on Delapine's face, and thought he detected a slight movement of the muscles. Was he mistaken? How could it be possible? Delapine was undoubtedly dead, he said to himself. Riche's face broke out into a cold sweat, and he attempted to cry out, but his voice died away in silence. No; he lifted up the professor's arms, but they fell down again by their own weight. The clouds flitting across the moon alternately hid and revealed her light, and the black shadows in the room seemed as if they formed themselves into imps and monsters. The stillness became awful. Would the morning never break? Only the clock on the mantel-shelf spoke. Tick-tack, tick-tack, it repeated in a monotonous tone, but no sound answered back. He heard a noise outside, and creeping up to the window, opened it and listened. Too-hoot, too-hoot, it sounded. "It is only the hooting of an owl in the garden," he said, as he shut the window and lay down on the sofa. Doctor Riche's thoughts wandered back again to the café and to Mademoiselle Violette and her ring. What was it she told him when she steadily gazed on it? "I must try and refresh my memory," he said to himself. "I think a sip of brandy might help me," and acting on the impulse he turned up the light, and entering the next room poured out a liqueur glass of the brandy which François had brought for Renée.

"Ah! That does one good," he said as he poured out a second glass. "I recollect perfectly now the very words she said. I remember her telling me that she saw a house in one of the suburbs of Paris.