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Archibald Malmaison by Julian Hawthorne
page 18 of 116 (15%)
a year from the time of his fit would have recognized him as the same
child. He was not only making up for lost time--he was incomparably
outstripping his earlier self; he seemed to have emerged from a mental and
physical cocoon--to have cast aside an incrustation of deterrent
clumsiness, and to be hastening onward with the airy case and accuracy of
perfect self-possession. At the end of a year he was to all intents and
purposes ten years old; and what was most remarkable about this swift
advance lay in the fact that a year had seen the whole of it. Though he
had been eight years in the world, the first seven had furnished none of
the mental or moral material for the last: it stood alone and
disconnectedly. Of those seven years it is certain that he retained not
the smallest recollection; they were to him as if they had never been. The
only thing they did provide him with was a well-fed and sound body; in
other respects Archibald was positively new. He had to make the
acquaintance of his family and friends over again; but it was done with
modifications. In other cases besides that of his uncle, it was observed
that he felt antipathies where formerly he loved, and _vice versa_.

A minor instance, but interesting as must be all evidence in a case so
strange as this, is that of the brindled cat that was buried in the
garden. Archibald was brought to the grave, which he had so pathetically
haunted before his metamorphosis, not many weeks after the metamorphosis
occurred; and every means was used to revive in him some recollection of
the bereavement; they even went so far as to uncover poor pussy's
remains.... Archibald was first unconscious and indifferent, then curious,
finally disgusted. His feelings were not otherwise touched. All
associations connected with this whilom pet of his, grief for whose loss
was supposed to have been the impelling cause of the fit itself, were as
utterly expunged from his mind as if they had never existed there.
Moreover, aversion from all cats was from this time forth so marked in him
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