The Insane Root by Rosa Praed — Read

Marillier was rousing from his lethargy. After his altercation with the doctors, when the fit of prostration had passed, the confusion of his dual personality was overwhelming as he lay here in Ruel Bey's bedchamber, surrounded by the objects which had made part of Ruel Bey's life--the life of a man about town--of many towns, but which were wholly foreign to his own tastes and pursuits. Then gradually, the surging waves of double memory seemed to subside and the confusion in his brain lessened. He could now think in more definite sequence-- could think as Marillier. It was true that the possession of Caspar's temperament and constitution in some degree irked him. At moments, he was galled by the pressure of unaccustomed physical limitations. At others, the spring of animal enjoyment that had been so buoyant in Caspar, brought him a feeling of strange pleasure in the mere fact of living, and in the joy of earth and its bounties, to which, as the student Marillier, he had been almost a stranger. Yet again at times, so strongly did he realise himself as Marillier, in so shadowy a fashion as Caspar, that he was obliged to look into the hand mirror which to Nurse Dalison's amusement he insisted on keeping at his bedside, in order to convince himself that he did not still occupy the body that had been known as Lucien Marillier, and which was now laid in the ground not far from that of the late Ambassador in Kensal Green Cemetery. Then, when he looked in the glass, and there gazed back at him the dark eyes of Ruel Bey, and he beheld the chiselled Greek features of Caspar, refined by sickness to almost poetic beauty, he would feel a thrill of satisfaction, even of triumph, in comparing them with that grey wolf face with its steely eyes and hard features, and with that ungainly form that had hitherto been the abode of his spirit, and which of late he had so longed to exchange for the splendour and charm of manhood which had won Rachel's love.

His desire had been granted him. He possessed now that glory of manhood which had seemed to him so great a thing in the eyes of women. And in gaining it, he seemed to have lost nothing of those intellectual gifts on which he had formerly laid far the greater store. He was still himself, Lucien Marillier, student, scientist, retaining the peculiar qualities of his own individuality, although weighted by certain material tendencies not agreeable to him, but which by his knowledge of the physical nature of man, he was aware that he might successfully combat. On the other hand he found himself endowed with a perfection of form, a keen vitality which from his boyhood he had vainly coveted; while more than this, and the very acme of these gifts, he had, in this exchange of personalities, gained for his own the woman he adored. And this in no sense of doubtfully transferred affections, in no rivalry of persons; but given to him heart--whole, pure, in deeper trust, in more assured love, with a fuller measure indeed of all his own love could desire, than had ever been bestowed upon the expelled Caspar.