Penny Blood Serial Cover — page 165: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

ALFRED DE ROSANN. 157 No sooner-had Louis Dorval closed the door of the haunted apartment, as it was called, than Belle-Rose hastily threw off his clothes, and took refuge against the damp air in his warm bed. De Rosann made two or three remarks relative to the singularity of their arrival at the very house in which Francois had been arrested ; but a few unmeaning monosyllables were all the replies he could obtain. He therefore relin- quished the unpleasant task of maintaining a conver- sation alone, and soon saw the utility of so doing ; for a certain nasal music, emanating from Belle-Rose’s couch, made him aware of the attention which would be paid to his diseourse. De Rosann himself did not experience the slightest inclination to sleep. A thousand ideas occupied his mind, and repelled the advance of slumber. He no longer felt fatigned with the effects of his day’s journey, nor did he once think of courting the charms of sleep by retiring to his bed. He recollected that in the identical chamber, where he was now seated, a murderer had reposed three-and-thirty years ago. Perhaps he had slept in the very bed destined to receive himself. De Rosann was not superstitious— he laughed in derision at the bare mention of a spirit, or an allusion to the possibility of the existence of ghosts—he believed that matter alone was visible, tangible, and capable of motion—he knew that when the organized body, called Man, had rendered up its life, sensations and organs performed their functions no longer, and that the decomposing clay could not return from the dark tomb to whose jaws it-was con- signed ; and at the moment when he found himself alone, as it were—for Belle-Rose slept soundly—in the apartment that recalled a thousand terrible images to his mind, he did not dread the sudden appearance of aught supernatural ; but he felt a species of indes- cribable awe—an aversion to close his eyes—a ner- vousness that made him start at each trivial sound— which the bravest occasionally feel when in peculiar VOL. 1.—14 . Co@nnicloookxs (C@