as I am by nature, I absolutely trembled at
the idea!

The whole force of my intelligence was now
directed to the finding of Anne Catherick. Our
money affairs, important as they were, admitted
of delay—but the necessity of discovering the
woman admitted of none. I only knew her, by
description, as presenting an extraordinary
personal resemblance to Lady Glyde. The statement
of this curious fact—intended merely to
assist me in identifying the person of whom we
were in search—when coupled with the additional
information that Anne Catherick had escaped
from a madhouse, started the first immense
conception in my mind, which subsequently led to
such amazing results. That conception involved
nothing less than the complete transformation
of two separate identities. Lady Glyde and
Anne Catherick were to change names, places,
and destinies, the one with the other—the
prodigious consequences contemplated by the
change, being the gain of thirty thousand
pounds, and the eternal preservation of Percival's
secret.

My instincts (which seldom err) suggested
to me, on reviewing the circumstances, that
our invisible Anne would, sooner or later,
return to the boat-house at the Blackwater
lake. There I posted myself; previously
mentioning to Mrs. Michelson, the
housekeeper, that I might be found when wanted,
immersed in study, in that solitary place. It is
my rule never to make unnecessary mysteries,
and never to set people suspecting me for want
of a little seasonable candour, on my part. Mrs.
Michelson believed in me from first to last.
This ladylike person (widow of a Protestant
Priest) overflowed with faith. Touched by such
superfluity of simple confidence, in a woman of
her mature years, I opened the ample reservoirs
of my nature, and absorbed it all.

I was rewarded for posting myself sentinel at
the lake, by the appearance—not of Anne
Catherick herself, but of the person in charge of
her. This individual also overflowed with simple
faith, which I absorbed in myself, as in the case
already mentioned. I leave her to describe
the circumstances (if she has not done so
already) under which she introduced me to the
object of her maternal care. When I first saw
Anne Catherick, she was asleep. I was electrified
by the likeness between this unhappy woman
and Lady Glyde. The details of the grand
scheme, which had suggested themselves in
outline only, up to that period, occurred to me, in
all their masterly combination, at the sight of
the sleeping face. At the same time, my heart,
always accessible to tender influences, dissolved
in tears at the spectacle of suffering before me.
I instantly set myself to impart relief. In other
words, I provided the necessary stimulant for
strengthening Anne Catherick to perform the
journey to London.

At this point, I enter a necessary protest, and
correct a lamentable error.

The best years of my life have been passed in
the ardent study of medical and chemical science.
Chemistry, especially, has always had irresistible
attractions for me, from the enormous, the
illimitable power which the knowledge of it confers.
Chemists, I assert it emphatically, might sway,
if they pleased, the destinies of humanity. Let
me explain this before I go further.

Mind, they say, rules the world. But what
rules the mind? The body. The body (follow
me closely here) lies at the mercy of the most
omnipotent of all mortal potentates—the
Chemist. Give me—Fosco—chemistry; and when
Shakespeare has conceived Hamlet, and sits
down to execute the conception with a few
grains of powder dropped into his daily food, I
will reduce his mind, by the action of his body,
till his pen pours out the most abject drivel that
has ever degraded paper. Under similar
circumstances, revive me the illustrious Newton.
I guarantee that, when he sees the apple fall, he
shall eat it, instead of discovering the principle
of gravitation. Nero's dinner, shall transform
Nero into the mildest of men, before he has
done digesting it; and the morning draught of
Alexander the Great, shall make Alexander run
for his life, at the first sight of the enemy, the
same afternoon. On my sacred word of honour,
it is lucky for society that modern chemists are,
by incomprehensible good fortune, the most
harmless of mankind. The mass are good
fathers of families, who keep shops. The few,
are philosophers besotted with admiration for
the sound of their own lecturing voices;
visionaries who waste their lives on fantastic
impossibilities; or quacks whose ambition soars no
higher than our corns. Thus Society escapes;
and the illimitable power of Chemistry remains
the slave of the most superficial and the most
insignificant ends.

Why this outburst? Why this withering
eloquence?

Because my conduct has been misrepresented;
because my motives have been misunderstood.
It has been assumed that I used my vast
chemical resources against Anne Catherick; and
that I would have used them, if I could, against
the magnificent Marian herself. Odious insinuations
both! All my interests were concerned
(as will be seen presently) in the preservation of
Anne Catherick's life. All my anxieties were
concentrated on Marian's rescue from the hands
of the licensed Imbecile who attended her; and
who found my advice confirmed, from first to
last, by the physician from London. On two
occasions only—both equally harmless to the
individual on whom I practised—did I summon
to myself the assistance of chemical knowledge.
On the first of the two, after following Marian
to the Inn at Blackwater (studying, behind a
convenient waggon which hid me from her, the
poetry of motion, as embodied in her walk), I
availed myself of the services of my invaluable
wife, to copy one and to intercept the other of
two letters which my adored enemy had
entrusted to a discarded maid. In this case, the
letters being in the bosom of the girl's dress,
Madame Fosco could only open them, read them,