Gulliver of Mars
Original Title: Lieut. Gulliver Jones CHAPTER I Dare I say it? Dare I say that I, a plain, prosaic lieutenant in the republican service have done the incredible things here set out for the love of a woman--for a chimera in female shape; for a pale, vapid ghost of woman-loveliness? At times I tell myself I dare not: that you will laugh, and cast me aside as a fabricator; and then again I pick up my pen and collect the scattered pages, for I MUST write it--the pallid splendour of that thing I loved, and won, and lost is ever before me, and will not be forgotten. The tumult of the struggle into which that vision led me still throbs in my mind, the soft, lisping voices of the planet I ransacked for its sake and the roar of the destruction which followed me back from the quest drowns all other sounds in my ears! I must and will write--it relieves me; read and believe as you list.
"Yes, madame; but you must bring it back to us. The doctor may need
it."
"It would be too painful for madame to see me operate," said the
doctor, understanding the suspicions of the prosecutor. "Messieurs,"
he added, "I hope you will allow her to remain in the next room."
The magistrates approved the request of the merciful physician, and
Felicie was permitted to attend her mistress. The judge and the
prosecutor talked together in a low voice. Officers of the law are
very unfortunate in being forced to suspect all, and to imagine evil
everywhere. By dint of supposing wicked intentions, and of
comprehending them, in order to reach the truth hidden under so many
contradictory actions, it is impossible that the exercise of their
dreadful functions should not, in the long run, dry up at their source
the generous emotions they are constrained to repress. If the
sensibilities of the surgeon who probes into the mysteries of the
human body end by growing callous, what becomes of those of the judge
who is incessantly compelled to search the inner folds of the soul?
Martyrs to their mission, magistrates are all their lives in mourning
for their lost illusions; crime weighs no less heavily on them than on
the criminal. An old man seated on the bench is venerable, but a young
judge makes a thoughtful person shudder. The examining judge in this
case was young, and he felt obliged to say to the public prosecutor,--
"Do you think that woman was her husband's accomplice? Ought we to
Original Title: Lieut. Gulliver Jones CHAPTER I Dare I say it? Dare I say that I, a plain, prosaic lieutenant in the republican service have done the incredible things here set out for the love of a woman--for a chimera in female shape; for a pale, vapid ghost of woman-loveliness? At times I tell myself I dare not: that you will laugh, and cast me aside as a fabricator; and then again I pick up my pen and collect the scattered pages, for I MUST write it--the pallid splendour of that thing I loved, and won, and lost is ever before me, and will not be forgotten. The tumult of the struggle into which that vision led me still throbs in my mind, the soft, lisping voices of the planet I ransacked for its sake and the roar of the destruction which followed me back from the quest drowns all other sounds in my ears! I must and will write--it relieves me; read and believe as you list.