













THE PARASITE

A Story


BY

A. CONAN DOYLE


AUTHOR OF "THE REFUGEES" "MICAH CLARKE" ETC.




1894




THE PARASITE

I

March 24.  The spring is fairly with us now.  Outside my laboratory
window the great chestnut-tree is all covered with the big, glutinous,
gummy buds, some of which have already begun to break into little green
shuttlecocks.  As you walk down the lanes you are conscious of the
rich, silent forces of nature working all around you.  The wet earth
smells fruitful and luscious.  Green shoots are peeping out everywhere.
The twigs are stiff with their sap; and the moist, heavy English air is
laden with a faintly resinous perfume.  Buds in the hedges, lambs
beneath them--everywhere the work of reproduction going forward!

I can see it without, and I can feel it within.  We also have our
spring when the little arterioles dilate, the lymph flows in a brisker
stream, the glands work harder, winnowing and straining.  Every year
nature readjusts the whole machine.  I can feel the ferment in my blood
at this very moment, and as the cool sunshine pours through my window I
could dance about in it like a gnat.  So I should, only that Charles
Sadler would rush upstairs to know what was the matter.  Besides, I
must remember that I am Professor Gilroy.  An old professor may afford
to be natural, but when fortune has given one of the first chairs in
the university to a man of four-and-thirty he must try and act the part
consistently.

What a fellow Wilson is!  If I could only throw the same enthusiasm
into physiology that he does into