"Edward Bellamy. Lookimg Backward From 2000 to 1887" - читать интересную книгу автора

that our immediate ancestors had possessed it. My medical
colleagues, whose curiosity was highly excited, were at once for
undertaking experiments to test the nature of the process
employed, but I withheld them. My motive in so doing, at least
the only motive I now need speak of, was the recollection of
something I once had read about the extent to which your
contemporaries had cultivated the subject of animal magnetism.
It had occurred to me as just conceivable that you might be in a
trance, and that the secret of your bodily integrity after so long a
time was not the craft of an embalmer, but life. So extremely
fanciful did this idea seem, even to me, that I did not risk the
ridicule of my fellow physicians by mentioning it, but gave some
other reason for postponing their experiments. No sooner, however,
had they left me, than I set on foot a systematic attempt at
resuscitation, of which you know the result."

Had its theme been yet more incredible, the circumstantiality
of this narrative, as well as the impressive manner and personality
of the narrator, might have staggered a listener, and I had
begun to feel very strangely, when, as he closed, I chanced to
catch a glimpse of my reflection in a mirror hanging on the wall
of the room. I rose and went up to it. The face I saw was the
face to a hair and a line and not a day older than the one I had
looked at as I tied my cravat before going to Edith that
Decoration Day, which, as this man would have me believe, was
celebrated one hundred and thirteen years before. At this, the
colossal character of the fraud which was being attempted on
me, came over me afresh. Indignation mastered my mind as I
realized the outrageous liberty that had been taken.

"You are probably surprised," said my companion, "to see
that, although you are a century older than when you lay down
to sleep in that underground chamber, your appearance is
unchanged. That should not amaze you. It is by virtue of the
total arrest of the vital functions that you have survived this
great period of time. If your body could have undergone any
change during your trance, it would long ago have suffered
dissolution."

"Sir," I replied, turning to him, "what your motive can be in
reciting to me with a serious face this remarkable farrago, I am
utterly unable to guess; but you are surely yourself too intelligent
to suppose that anybody but an imbecile could be deceived by it.
Spare me any more of this elaborate nonsense and once for all
tell me whether you refuse to give me an intelligible account of
where I am and how I came here. If so, I shall proceed to
ascertain my whereabouts for myself, whoever may hinder."

"You do not, then, believe that this is the year 2000?"