"A. E. Merritt - Three Lines of Old French" - читать интересную книгу автора (Merritt A. E)

"Perfect case of what I've been telling you. This lad here--utterly worn, weary--all his consciousness
centered upon just one thing--watchfulness . . . consciousness worn to finest point . . . behind it all his
subconsciousness crowding to escape . . . consciousness will respond to only one stimulus--movement
from without . . . but the subconsciousness, so close to the surface, held so lightly in leash . . . what will it
do if that little thread is loosed . . . a perfect case."

What were they talking about? Now they were whispering.

"Then, if I have your permission--" It was the surgeon speaking again. Permission for what? Why didn't
they go away and not bother him? Wasn't it hard enough just to watch without having to hear? Some
thing passed before his eyes. He looked at it blindly, unrecognizing. His sight must be clouded.
He raised a hand and brushed at his lids. Yes, it must have been his eyes--for it had gone.

A little circle of light glowed against the parapet near his face. It was cast by a small flash. What were
they looking for? A hand appeared in the circle, a hand with long, flexible fingers which held a piece of
paper on which there was writing. Did they want him to read, too? Not only watch and hear--but read!
He gathered himself together to protest.

Before he could force his stiffened lips to move he felt the upper button of his greatcoat undone, a hand
slipped through the opening and thrust something into his tunic pocket just above the heart.

Someone whispered "Lucie de Tocquelain." What did it mean? That was not the password. There was a
great singing in his head--as though he were sinking through water. What was that light that dazzled him
even through his closed lids? Painfully he opened his eyes.

Laveller looked straight into the disk of a golden sun slowly setting over a row of noble oaks. Blinded, he
dropped his gaze. He was standing ankle-deep in soft, green grass, starred with small clumps of blue
flowerets. Bees buzzed about in their chalices. Little yellow-winger butterflies hovered over them. A
gentle breeze blew, warm and fragrant.

Oddly he felt no sense of strangeness--then--this was a normal home world--a world as it ought to be.
But he remembered that he had once been in another world, far, far unlike this; a place of misery and
pain, of blood-stained mud and filth, of cold and wet; a world of cruelty, whose nights were tortured hells
of glaring lights and fiery, slaying sounds, and tormented men who sought for rest and sleep and found
none, and dead who danced. Where was it? Had there ever really been such a world? He was not
sleepy now.

He raised his hands and looked at them. They were grimed and cut and stained. He was wearing a
greatcoat, wet, mud-bespattered, filthy. High boots were on his legs. Beside one dirt-incrusted foot lay a
cluster of the blue flowerets, half-crushed. He groaned in pity, and bent, striving to raise the broken
blossoms.

"'Too many dead now--too many dead," he whispered; then paused. He had come from that nightmare
world! How else in this happy, clean one could he be so unclean?

Of course he had--but where was it? How had he made his way from it here? Ah, there had been a
password--what had it been?

He had it: "Lucie de Tocquelain!"