Henry Jekyll's Full Statement of the Case

by Robert Louis Stevenson

　　I WAS born in the year 18 -- to a large fortune, endowed besideswith excellent parts, inclined by nature to industry, fond of therespect of the wise and good among my fellow-men, and thus, asmight have been supposed, with every guarantee of an honourableand distinguished future. And indeed the worst of my faults was acertain impatient gaiety of disposition, such as has made thehappiness of many, but such as I found it hard to reconcile withmy imperious desire to carry my head high, and wear a more thancommonly grave countenance before the public. Hence it came aboutthat I concealed my pleasures; and that when I reached years ofreflection, and began to look round me and take stock of myprogress and position in the world, I stood already committed toa profound duplicity of life. Many a man would have even blazonedsuch irregularities as I was guilty of; but from the high viewsthat I had set before me, I regarded and hid them with an almostmorbid sense of shame. It was thus rather the exactingnature of my aspirations than any particular degradation in myfaults, that made me what I was and, with even a deeper trenchthan in the majority of men, severed in me those provinces ofgood and ill which divide and compound man's dual nature. In thiscase, I was driven to reflect deeply and inveterately on thathard law of life, which lies at the root of religion and is oneof the most plentiful springs of distress. Though so profound adouble-dealer, I was in no sense a hypocrite; both sides of mewere in dead earnest; I was no more myself when I laid asiderestraint and plunged in shame, than when I laboured, in the eyeof day, at the furtherance of knowledge or the relief of sorrowand suffering. And it chanced that the direction of my scientificstudies, which led wholly toward the mystic and thetranscendental, re-acted and shed a strong light on thisconsciousness of the perennial war among my members. With everyday, and from both sides of my intelligence, the moral and theintellectual, I thus drew steadily nearer to that truth, by whosepartial discovery I have been doomed to such a dreadfulshipwreck: that man is not truly one, but truly two. I say two,because the state of my own knowledge does not pass beyond thatpoint. Others will follow, others will outstrip me on the samelines; and I hazard the guess that man will be ultimately knownfor a mere polity of multifarious, incongruous, and independentdenizens. I, for my part, from the nature of my life, advanced infallibly in onedirection and in one direction only. It was on the moral side,and in my own person, that I learned to recognise the thoroughand primitive duality of man; I saw that, of the two natures thatcontended in the field of my consciousness, even if I couldrightly be said to be either, it was only because I was radicallyboth; and from an early date, even before the course of myscientific discoveries had begun to suggest the most nakedpossibility of such a miracle, I had learned to dwell withpleasure, as a beloved day-dream, on the thought of theseparation of these elements. If each, I told myself, could butbe housed in separate identities, life would be relieved of allthat was unbearable; the unjust delivered from the aspirationsmight go his way, and remorse of his more upright twin; and thejust could walk steadfastly and securely on his upward path,doing the good things in which he found his pleasure, and nolonger exposed to disgrace and penitence by the hands of thisextraneous evil. It was the curse of mankind that theseincongruous fagots were thus bound together that in the agonisedwomb of consciousness, these polar twins should be continuouslystruggling. How, then, were they dissociated?I was so far in my reflections when, as I have said, a side-lightbegan to shine upon the subject from the laboratory table. Ibegan to perceive more deeply than it has ever yet been stated, the tremblingimmateriality, the mist-like transience of this seemingly sosolid body in which we walk attired. Certain agents I found tohave the power to shake and to pluck back that fleshly vestment,even as a wind might toss the curtains of a pavilion. For twogood reasons, I will not enter deeply into this scientific branchof my confession. First, because I have been made to learn thatthe doom and burthen of our life is bound for ever on man'sshoulders, and when the attempt is made to cast it off, it butreturns upon us with more unfamiliar and more awful pressure.Second, because, as my narrative will make, alas! too evident, mydiscoveries were incomplete. Enough, then, that I not onlyrecognised my natural body for the mere aura and effulgence ofcertain of the powers that made up my spirit, but managed tocompound a drug by which these powers should be dethroned fromtheir supremacy, and a second form and countenance substituted,none the less natural to me because they were the expression, andbore the stamp, of lower elements in my soul.I hesitated long before I put this theory to the test ofpractice. I knew well that I risked death; for any drug that sopotently controlled and shook the very fortress of identity,might by the least scruple of an overdose or at the leastinopportunity in the moment of exhibition, utterly blot out thatimmaterial tabernacle which I looked to it to change. But the temptation of a discovery sosingular and profound, at last overcame the suggestions of alarm.I had long since prepared my tincture; I purchased at once, froma firm of wholesale chemists, a large quantity of a particularsalt which I knew, from my experiments, to be the last ingredientrequired; and late one accursed night, I compounded the elements,watched them boil and smoke together in the glass, and when theebullition had subsided, with a strong glow of courage, drank offthe potion.The most racking pangs succeeded: a grinding in the bones, deadlynausea, and a horror of the spirit that cannot be exceeded at thehour of birth or death. Then these agonies began swiftly tosubside, and I came to myself as if out of a great sickness.There was something strange in my sensations, somethingindescribably new and, from its very novelty, incredibly sweet. Ifelt younger, lighter, happier in body; within I was conscious ofa heady recklessness, a current of disordered sensual imagesrunning like a mill-race in my fancy, a solution of the bonds ofobligation, an unknown but not an innocent freedom of the soul. Iknew myself, at the first breath of this new life, to be morewicked, tenfold more wicked, sold a slave to my original evil;and the thought, in that moment, braced and delighted me likewine. I stretched out my hands, exulting in the freshness ofthese sensations; and in the act, I was suddenly aware that I had lostin stature.There was no mirror, at that date, in my room; that which standsbeside me as I write, was brought there later on and for the verypurpose of these transformations. The night, however, was fargone into the morning -- the morning, black as it was, was nearlyripe for the conception of the day -- the inmates of my housewere locked in the most rigorous hours of slumber; and Idetermined, flushed as I was with hope and triumph, to venture inmy new shape as far as to my bedroom. I crossed the yard, whereinthe constellations looked down upon me, I could have thought,with wonder, the first creature of that sort that theirunsleeping vigilance had yet disclosed to them; I stole throughthe corridors, a stranger in my own house; and coming to my room,I saw for the first time the appearance of Edward Hyde.I must here speak by theory alone, saying not that which I know,but that which I suppose to be most probable. The evil side of mynature, to which I had now transferred the stamping efficacy, wasless robust and less developed than the good which I had justdeposed. Again, in the course of my life, which had been, afterall, nine-tenths a life of effort, virtue, and control, it hadbeen much less exercised and much less exhausted. And hence, as Ithink, it came about that Edward Hyde was so much smaller,slighter, and younger than Henry Jekyll. Even as good shone uponthe countenance of the one, evil was written broadly and plainlyon the face of the other. Evil besides (which I must stillbelieve to be the lethal side of man) had left on that body animprint of deformity and decay. And yet when I looked upon thatugly idol in the glass, I was conscious of no repugnance, ratherof a leap of welcome. This, too, was myself. It seemed naturaland human. In my eyes it bore a livelier image of the spirit, itseemed more express and single, than the imperfect and dividedcountenance I had been hitherto accustomed to call mine. And inso far I was doubtless right. I have observed that when I worethe semblance of Edward Hyde, none could come near to me at firstwithout a visible misgiving of the flesh. This, as I take it, wasbecause all human beings, as we meet them, are commingled out ofgood and evil: and Edward Hyde, alone in the ranks of mankind,was pure evil.I lingered but a moment at the mirror: the second and conclusiveexperiment had yet to be attempted; it yet remained to be seen ifI had lost my identity beyond redemption and must flee beforedaylight from a house that was no longer mine; and hurrying backto my cabinet, I once more prepared and drank the cup, once moresuffered the pangs of dissolution, and came to myself once morewith the character, the stature, and the face of Henry Jekyll.That night I had come to the fatal cross-roads. Had I approachedmy discovery in a more noble spirit, had I risked the experimentwhile under the empire of generous or pious aspirations, all musthave been otherwise, and from these agonies of death and birth, Ihad come forth an angel instead of a fiend. The drug had nodiscriminating action; it was neither diabolical nor divine; itbut shook the doors of the prison-house of my disposition; andlike the captives of Philippi, that which stood within ran forth.At that time my virtue slumbered; my evil, kept awake byambition, was alert and swift to seize the occasion; and thething that was projected was Edward Hyde. Hence, although I hadnow two characters as well as two appearances, one was whollyevil, and the other was still the old Henry Jekyll, thatincongruous compound of whose reformation and improvement I hadalready learned to despair. The movement was thus wholly towardthe worse.Even at that time, I had not yet conquered my aversion to thedryness of a life of study. I would still be merrily disposed attimes; and as my pleasures were (to say the least) undignified,and I was not only well known and highly considered, but growingtoward the elderly man, this incoherency of my life was dailygrowing more unwelcome. It was on this side that my new powertempted me until I fell in slavery. I had but to drink the cup,to doff at once the body of the noted professor, and to assume, like a thick cloak, thatof Edward Hyde. I smiled at the notion; it seemed to me at thetime to be humorous; and I made my preparations with the moststudious care. I took and furnished that house in Soho, to whichHyde was tracked by the police; and engaged as housekeeper acreature whom I well knew to be silent and unscrupulous. On theother side, I announced to my servants that a Mr. Hyde (whom Idescribed) was to have full liberty and power about my house inthe square; and to parry mishaps, I even called and made myself afamiliar object, in my second character. I next drew up that willto which you so much objected; so that if anything befell me inthe person of Dr. Jekyll, I could enter on that of Edward Hydewithout pecuniary loss. And thus fortified, as I supposed, onevery side, I began to profit by the strange immunities of myposition.Men have before hired bravos to transact their crimes, whiletheir own person and reputation sat under shelter. I was thefirst that ever did so for his pleasures. I was the first thatcould thus plod in the public eye with a load of genialrespectability, and in a moment, like a schoolboy, strip offthese lendings and spring headlong into the sea of liberty. Butfor me, in my impenetrable mantle, the safety was complete. Thinkof it -- I did not even exist! Let me but escape into mylaboratory door, give me but a second or two to mix andswallow the draught that I had always standingready; and whatever he had done, Edward Hyde would pass away likethe stain of breath upon a mirror; and there in his stead,quietly at home, trimming the midnight lamp in his study, a manwho could afford to laugh at suspicion, would be Henry Jekyll.The pleasures which I made haste to seek in my disguise were, asI have said, undignified; I would scarce use a harder term. Butin the hands of Edward Hyde, they soon began to turn toward themonstrous. When I would come back from these excursions, I wasoften plunged into a kind of wonder at my vicarious depravity.This familiar that I called out of my own soul, and sent forthalone to do his good pleasure, was a being inherently malign andvillainous; his every act and thought centred on self; drinkingpleasure with bestial avidity from any degree of torture toanother; relentless like a man of stone. Henry Jekyll stood attimes aghast before the acts of Edward Hyde; but the situationwas apart from ordinary laws, and insidiously relaxed the graspof conscience. It was Hyde, after all, and Hyde alone, that wasguilty. Jekyll was no worse; he woke again to his good qualitiesseemingly unimpaired; he would even make haste, where it waspossible, to undo the evil done by Hyde. And thus his conscienceslumbered.Into the details of the infamy at which I thusconnived (for even now I can scarce grant that I committed it) Ihave no design of entering; I mean but to point out the warningsand the successive steps with which my chastisement approached. Imet with one accident which, as it brought on no consequence, Ishall no more than mention. An act of cruelty to a child arousedagainst me the anger of a passer-by, whom I recognised the otherday in the person of your kinsman; the doctor and the child'sfamily joined him; there were moments when I feared for my life;and at last, in order to pacify their too just resentment, EdwardHyde had to bring them to the door, and pay them in a chequedrawn in the name of Henry Jekyll. But this danger was easilyeliminated from the future, by opening an account at another bankin the name of Edward Hyde himself; and when, by sloping my ownhand backward, I had supplied my double with a signature, Ithought I sat beyond the reach of fate.Some two months before the murder of Sir Danvers, I had been outfor one of my adventures, had returned at a late hour, and wokethe next day in bed with somewhat odd sensations. It was in vainI looked about me; in vain I saw the decent furniture and tallproportions of my room in the square; in vain that I recognisedthe pattern of the bed-curtains and the design of the mahoganyframe; something still kept insisting that I was not where I was,that I had not wakened where I seemed to be, but in the littleroom in Soho where I was accustomed to sleep in the body ofEdward Hyde. I smiled to myself, and, in my psychological waybegan lazily to inquire into the elements of this illusion,occasionally, even as I did so, dropping back into a comfortablemorning doze. I was still so engaged when, in one of my morewakeful moments, my eyes fell upon my hand. Now the hand of HenryJekyll (as you have often remarked) was professional in shape andsize: it was large, firm, white, and comely. But the hand which Inow saw, clearly enough, in the yellow light of a mid-Londonmorning, lying half shut on the bed-clothes, was lean, corded,knuckly, of a dusky pallor and thickly shaded with a swart growthof hair. It was the hand of Edward Hyde.I must have stared upon it for near half a minute, sunk as I wasin the mere stupidity of wonder, before terror woke up in mybreast as sudden and startling as the crash of cymbals; andbounding from my bed, I rushed to the mirror. At the sight thatmet my eyes, my blood was changed into something exquisitely thinand icy. Yes, I had gone to bed Henry Jekyll, I had awakenedEdward Hyde. How was this to be explained? I asked myself, andthen, with another bound of terror -- how was it to be remedied?It was well on in the morning; the servants were up; all my drugswere in the cabinet -- a long journey down two pairs of stairs, through theback passage, across the open court and through the anatomicaltheatre, from where I was then standing horror-struck. It mightindeed be possible to cover my face; but of what use was that,when I was unable to conceal the alteration in my stature? Andthen with an overpowering sweetness of relief, it came back uponmy mind that the servants were already used to the coming andgoing of my second self. I had soon dressed, as well as I wasable, in clothes of my own size: had soon passed through thehouse, where Bradshaw stared and drew back at seeing Mr. Hyde atsuch an hour and in such a strange array; and ten minutes later,Dr. Jekyll had returned to his own shape and was sitting down,with a darkened brow, to make a feint of breakfasting.Small indeed was my appetite. This inexplicable incident, thisreversal of my previous experience, seemed, like the Babylonianfinger on the wall, to be spelling out the letters of myjudgment; and I began to reflect more seriously than ever beforeon the issues and possibilities of my double existence. That partof me which I had the power of projecting, had lately been muchexercised and nourished; it had seemed to me of late as thoughthe body of Edward Hyde had grown in stature, as though (when Iwore that form) I were conscious of a more generous tide ofblood; and I began to spy a danger that, if this were muchprolonged, the balance of my nature might bepermanently overthrown, the power of voluntary change beforfeited, and the character of Edward Hyde become irrevocablymine. The power of the drug had not been always equallydisplayed. Once, very early in my career, it had totally failedme; since then I had been obliged on more than one occasion todouble, and once, with infinite risk of death, to treble theamount; and these rare uncertainties had cast hitherto the soleshadow on my contentment. Now, however, and in the light of thatmorning's accident, I was led to remark that whereas, in thebeginning, the difficulty had been to throw off the body ofJekyll, it had of late gradually but decidedly transferred itselfto the other side. All things therefore seemed to point to this:that I was slowly losing hold of my original and better self, andbecoming slowly incorporated with my second and worse.Between these two, I now felt I had to choose. My two natures hadmemory in common, but all other faculties were most unequallyshared between them. Jekyll (who was composite) now with the mostsensitive apprehensions, now with a greedy gusto, projected andshared in the pleasures and adventures of Hyde; but Hyde wasindifferent to Jekyll, or but remembered him as the mountainbandit remembers the cavern in which he conceals himself frompursuit. Jekyll had more than a father's interest; Hydehad more than a son's indifference. To cast in my lot withJekyll, was to die to those appetites which I had long secretlyindulged and had of late begun to pamper. To cast it in withHyde, was to die to a thousand interests and aspirations, and tobecome, at a blow and for ever, despised and friendless. Thebargain might appear unequal; but there was still anotherconsideration in the scales; for while Jekyll would suffersmartingly in the fires of abstinence, Hyde would be not evenconscious of all that he had lost. Strange as my circumstanceswere, the terms of this debate are as old and commonplace as man;much the same inducements and alarms cast the die for any temptedand trembling sinner; and it fell out with me, as it falls withso vast a majority of my fellows, that I chose the better partand was found wanting in the strength to keep to it.Yes, I preferred the elderly and discontented doctor, surroundedby friends and cherishing honest hopes; and bade a resolutefarewell to the liberty, the comparative youth, the light step,leaping impulses and secret pleasures, that I had enjoyed in thedisguise of Hyde. I made this choice perhaps with someunconscious reservation, for I neither gave up the house in Soho,nor destroyed the clothes of Edward Hyde, which still lay readyin my cabinet. For two months, however, I was true to mydetermination; for two months I led a life of suchseverity as I had never before attained to, and enjoyed thecompensations of an approving conscience. But time began at lastto obliterate the freshness of my alarm; the praises ofconscience began to grow into a thing of course; I began to betortured with throes and longings, as of Hyde struggling afterfreedom; and at last, in an hour of moral weakness, I once againcompounded and swallowed the transforming draught.I do not suppose that, when a drunkard reasons with himself uponhis vice, he is once out of five hundred times affected by thedangers that he runs through his brutish, physical insensibility;neither had I, long as I had considered my position, made enoughallowance for the complete moral insensibility and insensatereadiness to evil, which were the leading characters of EdwardHyde. Yet it was by these that I was punished. My devil had beenlong caged, he came out roaring. I was conscious, even when Itook the draught, of a more unbridled, a more furious propensityto ill. It must have been this, I suppose, that stirred in mysoul that tempest of impatience with which I listened to thecivilities of my unhappy victim; I declare, at least, before God,no man morally sane could have been guilty of that crime upon sopitiful a provocation; and that I struck in no more reasonablespirit than that in which a sick child may break a plaything. ButI had voluntarily stripped myself of all those balancinginstincts by which even the worst of us continues to walk with some degreeof steadiness among temptations; and in my case, to be tempted,however slightly, was to fall.Instantly the spirit of hell awoke in me and raged. With atransport of glee, I mauled the unresisting body, tasting delightfrom every blow; and it was not till weariness had begun tosucceed, that I was suddenly, in the top fit of my delirium,struck through the heart by a cold thrill of terror. A mistdispersed; I saw my life to be forfeit; and fled from the sceneof these excesses, at once glorying and trembling, my lust ofevil gratified and stimulated, my love of life screwed to thetopmost peg. I ran to the house in Soho, and (to make assurancedoubly sure) destroyed my papers; thence I set out through thelamplit streets, in the same divided ecstasy of mind, gloating onmy crime, light-headedly devising others in the future, and yetstill hastening and still hearkening in my wake for the steps ofthe avenger. Hyde had a song upon his lips as he compounded thedraught, and as he drank it, pledged the dead man. The pangs oftransformation had not done tearing him, before Henry Jekyll,with streaming tears of gratitude and remorse, had fallen uponhis knees and lifted his clasped hands to God. The veil ofself-indulgence was rent from head to foot, I saw my life as awhole: I followed it up from the days of childhood, when I hadwalked with my father's hand, and through the self-denying toils of myprofessional life, to arrive again and again, with the same senseof unreality, at the damned horrors of the evening. I could havescreamed aloud; I sought with tears and prayers to smother downthe crowd of hideous images and sounds with which my memoryswarmed against me; and still, between the petitions, the uglyface of my iniquity stared into my soul. As the acuteness of thisremorse began to die away, it was succeeded by a sense of joy.The problem of my conduct was solved. Hyde was thenceforthimpossible; whether I would or not, I was now confined to thebetter part of my existence; and oh, how I rejoiced to think it!with what willing humility, I embraced anew the restrictions ofnatural life! with what sincere renunciation, I locked the doorby which I had so often gone and come, and ground the key undermy heel!The next day, came the news that the murder had been overlooked,that the guilt of Hyde was patent to the world, and that thevictim was a man high in public estimation. It was not only acrime, it had been a tragic folly. I think I was glad to know it;I think I was glad to have my better impulses thus buttressed andguarded by the terrors of the scaffold. Jekyll was now my city ofrefuge; let but Hyde peep out an instant, and the hands of allmen would be raised to take and slay him.I resolved in my future conduct to redeem the past; and I can saywith honesty that my resolve was fruitful of some good. You knowyourself how earnestly in the last months of last year, Ilaboured to relieve suffering; you know that much was done forothers, and that the days passed quietly, almost happily formyself. Nor can I truly say that I wearied of this beneficent andinnocent life; I think instead that I daily enjoyed it morecompletely; but I was still cursed with my duality of purpose;and as the first edge of my penitence wore off, the lower side ofme, so long indulged, so recently chained down, began to growlfor licence. Not that I dreamed of resuscitating Hyde; the bareidea of that would startle me to frenzy: no, it was in my ownperson, that I was once more tempted to trifle with myconscience; and it was as an ordinary secret sinner, that I atlast fell before the assaults of temptation.There comes an end to all things; the most capacious measure isfilled at last; and this brief condescension to evil finallydestroyed the balance of my soul. And yet I was not alarmed; thefall seemed natural, like a return to the old days before I hadmade discovery. It was a fine, clear, January day, wet under footwhere the frost had melted, but cloudless overhead; and theRegent's Park was full of winter chirrupings and sweet withspring odours. I sat in the sun on a bench; the animal within melicking the chops of memory; the spiritual side a little, drowsed, promisingsubsequent penitence, but not yet moved to begin. After all, Ireflected, I was like my neighbours; and then I smiled, comparingmyself with other men, comparing my active goodwill with the lazycruelty of their neglect. And at the very moment of thatvain-glorious thought, a qualm came over me, a horrid nausea andthe most deadly shuddering. These passed away, and left me faint;and then as in its turn the faintness subsided, I began to beaware of a change in the temper of my thoughts, a greaterboldness, a contempt of danger, a solution of the bonds ofobligation. I looked down; my clothes hung formlessly on myshrunken limbs; the hand that lay on my knee was corded andhairy. I was once more Edward Hyde. A moment before I had beensafe of all men's respect, wealthy, beloved -- the cloth layingfor me in the dining-room at home; and now I was the commonquarry of mankind, hunted, houseless, a known murderer, thrall tothe gallows.My reason wavered, but it did not fail me utterly. I have morethan once observed that, in my second character, my facultiesseemed sharpened to a point and my spirits more tensely elastic;thus it came about that, where Jekyll perhaps might havesuccumbed, Hyde rose to the importance of the moment. My drugswere in one of the presses of my cabinet; how was Ito reach them? That was the problem that (crushing my temples inmy hands) I set myself to solve. The laboratory door I hadclosed. If I sought to enter by the house, my own servants wouldconsign me to the gallows. I saw I must employ another hand, andthought of Lanyon. How was he to be reached? how persuaded?Supposing that I escaped capture in the streets, how was I tomake my way into his presence? and how should I, an unknown anddispleasing visitor, prevail on the famous physician to rifle thestudy of his colleague, Dr. Jekyll? Then I remembered that of myoriginal character, one part remained to me: I could write my ownhand; and once I had conceived that kindling spark, the way thatI must follow became lighted up from end to end.Thereupon, I arranged my clothes as best I could, and summoninga passing hansom, drove to an hotel in Portland Street, the nameof which I chanced to remember. At my appearance (which wasindeed comical enough, however tragic a fate these garmentscovered) the driver could not conceal his mirth. I gnashed myteeth upon him with a gust of devilish fury; and the smilewithered from his face -- happily for him -- yet more happily formyself, for in another instant I had certainly dragged him fromhis perch. At the inn, as I entered, I looked about me with soblack a countenance as made the attendants tremble; not a lookdid they exchange in my presence; but obsequiously took my orders, led me to a privateroom, and brought me wherewithal to write. Hyde in danger of hislife was a creature new to me; shaken with inordinate anger,strung to the pitch of murder, lusting to inflict pain. Yet thecreature was astute; mastered his fury with a great effort of thewill; composed his two important letters, one to Lanyon and oneto Poole; and that he might receive actual evidence of theirbeing posted, sent them out with directions that they should beregistered.Thenceforward, he sat all day over the fire in the private room,gnawing his nails; there he dined, sitting alone with his fears,the waiter visibly quailing before his eye; and thence, when thenight was fully come, he set forth in the corner of a closed cab,and was driven to and fro about the streets of the city. He, Isay -- I cannot say, I. That child of Hell had nothing human;nothing lived in him but fear and hatred. And when at last,thinking the driver had begun to grow suspicious, he dischargedthe cab and ventured on foot, attired in his misfitting clothes,an object marked out for observation, into the midst of thenocturnal passengers, these two base passions raged within himlike a tempest. He walked fast, hunted by his fears, chatteringto himself, skulking through the less-frequented thoroughfares,counting the minutes that still divided him from midnight. Once awoman spoke to him, offering, I think, a box of lights. He smoteher in the face, and she fled.When I came to myself at Lanyon's, the horror of my old friendperhaps affected me somewhat: I do not know; it was at least buta drop in the sea to the abhorrence with which I looked back uponthese hours. A change had come over me. It was no longer the fearof the gallows, it was the horror of being Hyde that racked me. Ireceived Lanyon's condemnation partly in a dream; it was partlyin a dream that I came home to my own house and got into bed. Islept after the prostration of the day, with a stringent andprofound slumber which not even the nightmares that wrung mecould avail to break. I awoke in the morning shaken, weakened,but refreshed. I still hated and feared the thought of the brutethat slept within me, and I had not of course forgotten theappalling dangers of the day before; but I was once more at home,in my own house and close to my drugs; and gratitude for myescape shone so strong in my soul that it almost rivalled thebrightness of hope.I was stepping leisurely across the court after breakfast,drinking the chill of the air with pleasure, when I was seizedagain with those indescribable sensations that heralded thechange; and I had but the time to gain the shelter of my cabinet,before I was once again raging and freezing with the passions ofHyde. It took on this occasion a double dose to recall me tomyself; and alas! Six hours after, as I sat looking sadly in thefire, the pangs returned, and the drug had to be re-administered.In short, from that day forth it seemed only by a great effort asof gymnastics, and only under the immediate stimulation of thedrug, that I was able to wear the countenance of Jekyll. At allhours of the day and night, I would be taken with the premonitoryshudder; above all, if I slept, or even dozed for a moment in mychair, it was always as Hyde that I awakened. Under the strain ofthis continually-impending doom and by the sleeplessness to whichI now condemned myself, ay, even beyond what I had thoughtpossible to man, I became, in my own person, a creature eaten upand emptied by fever, languidly weak both in body and mind, andsolely occupied by one thought: the horror of my other self. Butwhen I slept, or when the virtue of the medicine wore off, Iwould leap almost without transition (for the pangs oftransformation grew daily less marked) into the possession of afancy brimming with images of terror, a soul boiling withcauseless hatreds, and a body that seemed not strong enough tocontain the raging energies of life. The powers of Hyde seemed tohave grown with the sickliness of Jekyll. And certainly the hatethat now divided them was equal on each side. With Jekyll, it wasa thing of vital instinct. He had now seen the full deformity ofthat creature that shared with him some of the phenomena ofconsciousness, and was co-heir with him to death: and beyond theselinks of community, which in themselves made the most poignantpart of his distress, he thought of Hyde, for all his energy oflife, as of something not only hellish but inorganic. This was theshocking thing; that the slime of the pit seemed to utter criesand voices; that the amorphous dust gesticulated and sinned; thatwhat was dead, and had no shape, should usurp the offices of life.And this again, that that insurgent horror was knit to him closerthan a wife, closer than an eye; lay caged in his flesh, where heheard it mutter and felt it struggle to be born; and at every hourof weakness, and in the confidence of slumber, prevailed againsthim and deposed him out of life. The hatred of Hyde for Jekyll,was of a different order. His tenor of the gallows drove himcontinually to commit temporary suicide, and return to hissubordinate station of a part instead of a person; but he loathedthe necessity, he loathed the despondency into which Jekyll wasnow fallen, and he resented the dislike with which he was himselfregarded. Hence the ape-like tricks that he would play me,scrawling in my own hand blasphemies on the pages of my books,burning the letters and destroying the portrait of my father; andindeed, had it not been for his fear of death, he would long agohave ruined himself in order to involve me in the ruin. But hislove of life is wonderful; I go further: I, who sickenand freeze at the mere thought of him, when I recall theabjection and passion of this attachment, and when I know how hefears my power to cut him off by suicide, I find it in my heartto pity him.It is useless, and the time awfully fails me, to prolong thisdescription; no one has ever suffered such torments, let thatsuffice; and yet even to these, habit brought -- no, notalleviation -- but a certain callousness of soul, a certainacquiescence of despair; and my punishment might have gone on foryears, but for the last calamity which has now fallen, and whichhas finally severed me from my own face and nature. My provisionof the salt, which had never been renewed since the date of thefirst experiment, began to run low. I sent out for a freshsupply, and mixed the draught; the ebullition followed, and thefirst change of colour, not the second; I drank it and it waswithout efficiency. You will learn from Poole how I have hadLondon ransacked; it was in vain; and I am now persuaded that myfirst supply was impure, and that it was that unknown impuritywhich lent efficacy to the draught.About a week has passed, and I am now finishing this statementunder the influence of the last of the old powders. This, then,is the last time, short of a miracle, that Henry Jekyll can thinkhis own thoughts or see his own face (now how sadly altered!)in the glass. Nor must I delay too long to bring my writing to an end; for if my narrative hashitherto escaped destruction, it has been by a combination ofgreat prudence and great good luck. Should the throes of changetake me in the act of writing it, Hyde will tear it in pieces;but if some time shall have elapsed after I have laid it by, hiswonderful selfishness and Circumscription to the moment willprobably save it once again from the action of his ape-likespite. And indeed the doom that is closing on us both, hasalready changed and crushed him. Half an hour from now, when Ishall again and for ever re-indue that hated personality, I knowhow I shall sit shuddering and weeping in my chair, or continue,with the most strained and fear-struck ecstasy of listening, topace up and down this room (my last earthly refuge) and give earto every sound of menace. Will Hyde die upon the scaffold? orwill he find courage to release himself at the last moment? Godknows; I am careless; this is my true hour of death, and what isto follow concerns another than myself. Here then, as I lay downthe pen and proceed to seal up my confession, I bring the life ofthat unhappy Henry Jekyll to an end.