My swoon was, I believe, of no great duration, and I awoke from it a new man, as well as an old one.
Yes, I was changed, and with a vengeance; and into such a miserable creature, that had I justly conceived what I was to become in entering old Goldfist's body, I doubt whether even the extremity in which I was placed would have forced me upon the transformation. I forgot that the title to Skinner's wealth was saddled with the conditions of age, infirmity, and a thousand others equally disagreeable. But I soon made the discovery, though it was some time before I discovered all.
The first inconvenience of the transformation which I felt was a thousand aches in my bones, a great disturbance in my inner man, and a general sense of feebleness and impotency, highly vexatious and tormenting. My eyesight was bad, my hearing indistinct, and, indeed, all my senses were more or less confused; my hand trembled when I lifted it to my face, my voice quavered while I spoke, and every effort to breath seemed to fill my lungs with coal-gas and ashes. In a word, I was a man of sixty years or more, with a constitution just breaking up, if not already broken.
My resuscitation produced a hubbub of no ordinary character. My sons—for, wonderful to be said, I had sons, and I soon felt as if they were in reality mine—were confounded, and so, doubtless, was Barbara, the housekeeper; to the latter of whom it was perhaps owing that I ever recovered from my swoon; for my two boys, overcome with horror and despair, rushed out of the house, and it was a week before I saw their faces again.
What added to the confusion was the discovery of my late body, lying on the floor, no one being at all able to account for its appearance. To this day, indeed, the thing remains a mystery among tailors and shop-keepers. It was pretty generally considered that the unfortunate I. D. Dawkins met his death by dunning, and I believe the coroner's jury returned a verdict accordingly; but how he made his way into the chamber of the usurer to give up the ghost, just at the moment the other was resuming it, was never known. Some supposed he had visited the old gentleman to borrow money, and had knocked his head against the bedpost in despair upon finding the lender past lending. Speculation was alive upon the subject for two full days, and was then buried in the young gentleman's grave, along with his body and his memory; for the memory of a dandy passeth away, unless recorded on the books of his tailor.
I was confined to my bed a week, suffering with a complication of disorders; for, though I possessed the power to reanimate a corpse, I had none to conjure away its diseases. In this period I had leisure to exchange all previous characteristics that might have clung to me, for those that more properly belonged to my new casing; and when I rose from my bed the transformation was in every particular complete. My soul had lost its identity; it had taken its shape from the mould it occupied; it was the counterpart of the soul of Abram Skinner.
My last act as I. D. Dawkins was to chuckle over the prospect of spending Abram Skinner's money; my first as Abram Skinner was to take care it should be spent neither by myself nor by any one else. The desire to enjoy myself had vanished; the thoughts of fine clothes, horses and carriages, and so on, entered my mind no more. The only idea that possessed me was, "What am I worth? how much more can I make myself worth?" and the first thing I did, when I could sit in a chair, was to ransack a certain iron chest that stood under my bed, containing my prototype's books of accounts, over which I gloated with the mingled anxiety and delight that had doubtless distinguished the studies of the true Goldfist.
I found myself rich beyond all my previously-formed expectations; and, glum and rigid as were now all my feelings, I think I should have danced around my chamber for joy, had not the first flourish of a leg introduced me to the pangs of rheumatism. I indulged my rapture, therefore, in a soberer way; and while awaiting the period of emancipation from my chamber, arranged a thousand plans for increasing my wealth.
My sons had deserted me, but I was not left entirely to solitude. I received divers visits from old fellows like myself, who, after growling out a variety of wonder and congratulation at my return to life, proceeded to counsel with me on subjects, the discussion of which speedily brought me to the knowledge of my new condition, where it had not been supplied by the iron chest and my instincts.