“I do certainly believe I have found an account of his case in an Italian medical journal of about fourteen years ago.  I met with a reference which led me to look over a file of the Giornale degli Ospitali lying among the old pamphlets in the medical section of the Library.  I have made a translation of it, which you must read and then tell me if you do not agree with me in my conclusion.”

“Tell me what your conclusion is, and I will read your paper and see for myself whether I think the evidence justifies the conviction you seem to have reached.”

Lurida’s large eyes showed their whole rounds like the two halves of a map of the world, as she said,

“I believe that Maurice Kirkwood is suffering from the effects of the bite of a tarantula!”

The doctor drew a long breath.  He remembered in a vague sort of way the stories which used to be told of the terrible Apulian spider, but he had consigned them to the limbo of medical fable where so many fictions have clothed themselves with a local habitation and a name.  He looked into the round eyes and wide pupils a little anxiously, as if he feared that she was in a state of undue excitement, but, true to his professional training, he waited for another symptom, if indeed her mind was in any measure off its balance.

“I know what you are thinking,” Lurida said, “but it is not so.  ’I am not mad, most noble Festus.’  You shall see the evidence and judge for yourself.  Read the whole case,—­you can read my hand almost as if it were print, and tell me if you do not agree with me that this young man is in all probability the same person as the boy described in the Italian journal,

“One thing you might say is against the supposition.  The young patient is spoken of as Signorino M . . .  Ch. . . .  But you must remember that ch is pronounced hard in Italian, like k, which letter is wanting in the Italian alphabet; and it is natural enough that the initial of the second name should have got changed in the record to its Italian equivalent.”

Before inviting the reader to follow the details of this extraordinary case as found in a medical journal, the narrator wishes to be indulged in a few words of explanation, in order that he may not have to apologize for allowing the introduction of a subject which may be thought to belong to the professional student rather than to the readers of this record.  There is a great deal in medical books which it is very unbecoming to bring before the general public,—­a great deal to repel, to disgust, to alarm, to excite unwholesome curiosity.  It is not the men whose duties have made them familiar with this class of subjects who are most likely to offend by scenes and descriptions which belong to the physician’s private library, and not to the shelves devoted to polite literature.  Goldsmith and even Smollett, both having studied and practised medicine, could not by any possibility have outraged all the natural feelings of delicacy and