ious measure is filled
at last; and this brief condescension to my evil finally destroyed the
balance of my soul. And yet I was not alarmed; the fall seemed natural,
like a return to the old days before I had made my discovery. It was a
fine, clear, January day, wet under foot where the frost had melted, but
cloudless overhead; and the Regent's Park was full of winter chirrupings
and sweet with spring odours. I sat in the sun on a bench; the animal
within me licking the chops of memory; the spiritual side a little
drowsed, promising subsequent penitence, but not yet moved to begin.
After all, I reflected, I was like my neighbours; and then I smiled,
comparing myself with other men, comparing my active good-will with
the lazy cruelty of their neglect. And at the very moment of that
vainglorious thought, a qualm came over me, a horrid nausea and the most
deadly shuddering. These passed away, and left me faint; and then as
in its turn faintness subsided, I began to be aware of a change in
the temper of my thoughts, a greater boldness, a contempt of danger,
a solution of the bonds of obligation. I looked down; my clothes hung
formlessly on my shrunken limbs; the hand that lay on my knee was corded
and hairy. I was once more Edward Hyde. A moment before I had been safe
of all men's respect, wealthy, beloved--the cloth laying for me in the
dining-room at home; and now I was the common quarry of mankind, hunted,
houseless, a known murderer, thrall to the gallows.

My reason wavered, but it did not fail me utterly. I have more than once
observed that in my second character, my faculties seemed sharpened to
a point and my spirits more tensely elastic; thus it came about that,
where Jekyll perhaps might have succumbed, Hyde rose to the importance
of the moment. My drugs were in one of the presses of my cabinet; how
was I to reach them? That was the problem that (crushing my temples in
my hands) I set myself to solve. The laboratory door I had closed. If
I sought to enter by the house, my own servants would consign me to the
gallows. I saw I must employ another hand, and thought of Lanyon. How
was he to be reached? how persuaded? Supposing that I escaped capture in
the streets, how was I to make my way into his presence? and how should
I, an unknown and displeasing visitor, prevail on the famous physician
to rifle the study of his colleague, Dr. Jekyll? Then I remembered that
of my original character, one part remained to me: I cou