"Hawthorne, Nathaniel - Dr. Heidegger's Experiment" - читать интересную книгу автора (Hawthorne Nathaniel)

1837

TWICE-TOLD TALES

DR. HEIDEGGER'S EXPERIMENT

by Nathaniel Hawthorne

THAT VERY SINGULAR MAN, old Dr. Heidegger, once invited four
venerable friends to meet him in his study. There were three
white-bearded gentlemen, Mr. Medbourne, Colonel Killigrew, and Mr.
Gascoigne, and a withered gentlewoman, whose name was the Widow
Wycherly. They were all melancholy old creatures, who had been
unfortunate in life, and whose greatest misfortune it was that they
were not long ago in their graves. Mr. Medbourne, in the vigor of
his age, had been a prosperous merchant, but had lost his all by a
frantic speculation, and was now little better than a mendicant.
Colonel Killigrew had wasted his best years, and his health and
substance, in the pursuit of sinful pleasures, which had given birth
to a brood of pains, such as the gout, and divers other torments of
soul and body. Mr. Gascoigne was a ruined politician, a man of evil
fame, or at least had been so till time had buried him from the
knowledge of the present generation, and made him obscure instead of
infamous. As for the Widow Wycherly, tradition tells us that she was a
great beauty in her day; but, for a long while past, she had lived
in deep seclusion, on account of certain scandalous stories which
had prejudiced the gentry of the town against her. It is a
circumstance worth mentioning that each of these three old
gentlemen, Mr. Medbourne, Colonel Killigrew, and Mr. Gascoigne, were
early lovers of the Widow Wycherly, and had once been on the point
of cutting each other's throats for her sake. And, before proceeding
further, I will merely hint that Dr. Heidegger and all his four guests
were sometimes thought to be a little beside themselves- as is not
unfrequently the case with old people, when worried either by
present troubles or woful recollections.

"My dear old friends," said Dr. Heidegger, motioning them to be
seated, I am desirous of your assistance in one of those little
experiments with which I amuse myself here in my study."

If all stories were true, Dr. Heidegger's study must have been a
very curious place. It was a dim, old-fashioned chamber, festooned
with cobwebs, and besprinkled with antique dust. Around the walls
stood several oaken bookcases, the lower shelves of which were
filled with rows of gigantic folios and black-letter quartos, and
the upper with little parchment-covered duodecimos. Over the central
bookcase was a bronze bust of Hippocrates, with which, according to
some authorities, Dr. Heidegger was accustomed to hold consultations
in all difficult cases of his practice. In the obscurest corner of the
room stood a tall and narrow oaken closet, with its door ajar,