Page:Gaston Leroux--The man with the black feather.djvu/59

Rh : "Nothing is lost in nature," he said authoritatively. "Everything is transformed, souls and bodies alike. The transmigration of souls with a view to their purification is a belief which goes back to the remotest antiquity; and the philosophers of all ages have been careful not to deny it."

"But if one came back into a body, one would know it," said Marceline.

"Not always, only sometimes," said Adolphe confidently.

"Sometimes? Is that so?" said Theophrastus quickly; and his heart began to beat tumultuously.

"Oh, yes: there are instances—authentic instances," said Adolphe emphatically. "Ptolemy Cæsarion, Cleopatra's son and King of Egypt thirty years before Christ, recollected perfectly that he had been the philosopher Pythagoras who lived six hundred years before him."

"Impossible!" cried the ladies; and the men smiled with an air of superior wisdom.

"It's nothing to laugh at, gentlemen. It's the most serious subject in the world," said Adolphe sternly. "The actual transformation of our bodies which is the last word in Science, is in entire accord with the theory of Re-