After his lunch he went as usual to the Ruelle des Vieux Pigeons and just as it was striking noon entered No. 31, belonging to Nicholas Bricolet, outfitter, dealer in antique furniture, secondhand bookseller, and in his spare time cobbler as well. The Doctor, as though moved by an inspiration, climbed at once to the attic, put his hand up to the third shelf of a Louis XIII bookcase, and took down from it a bulky parchment manuscript, entitled:
My Eighteen Metempsychoses. An Account of My Existences Since the Year CLXXXIV of the So-Called Christian Era.
Immediately following this singular title was the following introduction, which Heraclius Gloss deciphered forthwith.
“This manuscript, which contains the true story of my transmigrations, was begun by me in the city of Rome in the year 184 of the Christian era, as stated above. This explanation, destined to enlighten mankind on the alternations of reappearances of the soul, is signed by me, this 16th day of April 1748, in the town of Balançon, where I have been cast by the vicissitudes of my fate.
“Let any clearheaded man, intent upon the problems of philosophy, scan these pages, and light will be revealed to him in the most startling way.
“For this reason I am going to summarise in a few lines the substance of my story, which can be studied below, however little the reader may know of Latin, Greek, German, Italian, Spanish and French; for in the different epochs when I have reappeared as a human being, I have lived among diverse peoples. Next I will explain by what chain of ideas, what psychological precautions and what mnemonic devices I arrived at certain infallible metempsychosic conclusions.
“In the year 184 I was living in Rome and was a philosopher. As I was strolling one day along the Appian Way the idea occurred to me that Pythagoras might well have been like the still faint dawn of a great day soon to come. From that moment I had but one desire, one aim, one constant preoccupation—to remember my past. But alas! all my efforts were in vain. There came back to me no memory of my previous existence.
“Now, one day I saw by chance on the pedestal of a statue of Jupiter which stood in my entrance hall, certain marks which I had carved there in my youth and which suddenly reminded me of an event long since forgotten. This was like a ray of light to me; and I realized that if a few years, sometimes one night, even, were sufficient to efface a memory, how much more certainly things accomplished in previous existences and over which had passed the great sleep of intermediate animal lives, would disappear from our remembrance.
“So I carved my own history on stone tablets in the hope that fate would one day put them before my eyes again and that for me they would act like the writing on the pedestal of the statue.
“It happened as I wished. A century later, when I was an architect, I was instructed to demolish an old house on the site of which a palace was to be built.
“One day the workmen under me brought me a broken stone covered with writing, which they had found when preparing the foundations. I set myself to decipher it and as I was reading the life of whoever had written the lines, there came back to me in an instant glimmers of light from a forgotten past. Little by little daylight penetrated my soul. I understood. I remembered. It was I who had engraved that stone.
“But during this interval of a century, what had I done and what had I been? Under what form had I suffered? Nothing could teach me that. One day, however, I had a clue, but it was so faint and vague that I dared not rely upon it. An old man, a neighbour of mine, told me that fifty years previously (just nine months before I was born) much amusement was caused in Rome by an adventure which happened to the Senator Marcus Antonius Cornelius Lipa. His wife, who was good looking and very perverse, so it was said, had purchased from the Phoenician merchants, a large monkey of which she became very fond. The Senator Cornelius Lipa was jealous of the affection which his better half showed for this four-handed beast with the face of a man, and killed him. In listening to this story I had a very vague idea that that monkey was myself and that in that form I had suffered for a long time as a penalty for some moral fall, but I gathered nothing very clearly or precisely. However, I was led to establish the following hypothesis, which is at least quite plausible.
“To take the form of an animal is a penance imposed upon the soul for crimes committed as a human being. Recollection of higher existences is given to the beast in order to punish him by the consciousness of his fall. Only a soul which has been purified by suffering can regain human form; it then forgets the animal periods through which it has passed, since it is regenerated and since such knowledge would imply unmerited suffering. Consequently Man should preserve and respect the beasts, just as one respects a sinner who is expiating his evildoing, and also in order that others may protect him when he in his turn reappears in animal form. This, in effect, is analogous to the Christian precept: ‘Do not unto others what you would not have done unto you.’
“The account of my transmigrations will show how I had the good fortune to rediscover my memories in each of my existences; how I transcribed the story anew, first on brass tablets, then on Egyptian papyrus, and at length, long afterwards, on German parchment, such as I am using today.
“It remains for me to deduce from this doctrine its philosophic conclusion. Every philosophy has been arrested before the insoluble
