Chapter I: Front Matter

NEW BODIES FOR OLD

NEW BODIES
FOR OLD

BY
MAURICE RENARD

NEW YORK
THE MACAULAY COMPANY

COPYRIGHT, 1923
BY MAURICE RENARD

PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA

DEDICATION

_To H. G. Wells_:

I beg you, Sir, to accept this book.

Of all the pleasures that its writing gave me, that of dedicating it to you is assuredly not the least.

I conceived it under the inspiration of ideas that you cherish, and I could have wished that it had come nearer to your own works than it does, not in merit--that would be an absurd pretension--but, at any rate, in that pleasant quality shown in all your books, which allows the chastest minds, as well as those that exact the greatest realism, to have communion with your genius--a communion which the ablest people of our time can acknowledge without feeling its charm lessened by such considerations.

But when Fortune for good or ill allowed me to discover the subject of this allegorical novel, I felt bound not to set it aside because of a few audacities which a faithful rendering involved and which an arrest of development alone--that is, a crime against the literary conscience--could avoid.

You now know--you could have guessed as much--what I should like people to think of my work, if by chance any one did it the unexpected honor of thinking about it at all. Far from desiring to arouse the creature of instinct in my reader and amuse him with scandalous descriptions, my work is addressed to the philosopher anxious for Truth amid the marvels of Fiction and for Orderliness amid the tumult of imaginary Adventures.

That, Sir, is why I beg you to accept it.

M. R.

CONTENTS

PAGE

INTRODUCTION 9

CHAPTER

I NOCTURNE 16

II AMONG THE SPHINXES 38

III THE CONSERVATORY 65

IV HOT AND COLD 84

V “THE MADMAN” 101

VI NELL--THE ST. BERNARD 117

VII THUS SPAKE MLLE. BOURDICHET 136

VIII RASHNESS 154

IX THE AMBUSH 171

X THE CIRCEEAN OPERATION 192

XI IN THE PADDOCK 217

XII LERNE CHANGES HIS METHOD OF ATTACK 235

XIII EXPERIMENTS! HALLUCINATIONS! 253

XIV DEATH AND THE MASK 262

XV THE NEW BEAST 279

XVI THE WIZARD FINALLY DIES 300

NEW BODIES FOR OLD

NEW BODIES FOR OLD