Lesson 8: Dr Lanyon's Midnight Visitor

"This person was strangely dressed in clothes far too large for him, which made his figure look almost ludicrous; yet far from moving me to laughter, his presence inspired a curiosity and disgust that I could scarcely control... He measured out a few minims of the red tincture and added one of the powders. The mixture, which was at first of a reddish hue, began, in proportion as the crystals melted, to brighten in colour, to effervesce audibly, and to throw off small fumes of vapour. Suddenly and at the same moment, the ebullition ceased and the compound changed to a dark purple, which faded again more slowly to a watery green. He put the glass to his lips and drank at one gulp. A cry followed; he reeled, staggered, clutched at the table and held on, staring with injected eyes, gasping with open mouth; and as I looked there came, I thought, a change—he seemed to swell—his face became suddenly black and the features seemed to melt and alter—and the next moment, I had sprung to my feet and leaped back against the wall, my arm raised to shield me from that prodigy, my mind submerged in terror. 'O God!' I screamed, and 'O God!' again and again; for there before my eyes—pale and shaken, and half-fainting, and groping before him with his hands, like a man restored from death—there stood Henry Jekyll!" — R.L. Stevenson, Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde (1886), Chapter 9: Dr Lanyon's Narrative Original Text