With such a thing in one's hand, picked up like some horrible talisman which, if not buried, will eventually cast its spell upon human thought and the future of the world; with such a thing in one's hand, surely the Church would present itself to the mind as a court of appeal.
But as the Roman Catholic Church had actually put its broad back against the door of the torture chamber, and was, in fact, holding it tight shut whilst Papeete's head was being hacked from his body, it would scarcely be logical to bring out the victim's skull hoping for redress. Other denominations being of such little power in France, Adams determined to leave the attempt to rouse them till he reached England, whither he determined to go as soon as Berselius's health would permit him.
One evening, a fortnight after his visit to Pugin, on his return to the Avenue Malakoff, Maxine met him in the hall.
He saw at once from her face that something had happened.
Berselius was worse; that afternoon he had suddenly developed acute neuralgia of the right side of the head, and this had been followed almost immediately by twitching and numbness of the left arm. Thénard had been summoned and he had diagnosed pressure on the brain, or, at least, irritation from depressed bone, due to the accident.
He declared himself for operation, and he had gone now to make arrangements for nurses and assistants.
"He will operate this evening," said Maxine.
Berselius, for the last fortnight, had been going back, slowly going from bad to worse, and keeping the fact to himself.
Sulphonal, trional, morphia, each tried in turn had no power to prevent him from dreaming. Sleep as soundly as he would, just as he was awaking, the black blanket of slumber, turned up at a corner or an edge by some mysterious hand, would reveal a dream or part of one.
There was nothing in these dreams to terrify him when he was dreaming them; in them, he was just the old brave Berselius that nothing could terrify, but there was often a good deal to terrify him when he awoke.
Many of them were quite innocent and as fatuous as dreams are wont to be, but even these innocent dreams fretted the soul of the waking man, for in every scrap and vestige of them he recognized the mind of that other personality.
