Extrait, en langue originale, de l’Étrange Cas du Dr Jekyll et de M. Hyde de Robert Louis Stevenson, publié en anglais sous le titre The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde (1886).

Robert Louis Stevenson

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The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde was Robert Louis Stevenson’s second novel—after Treasure Island, which was a moderate success—and has had enormous influence ever since, the names of its protagonists having entered the English language. Dark and powerful, this novella examines the duality of human nature, namely the balance of the “civilized”, rational, restrained person and the uninhibited core—the potential for physical, moral, and intellectual evil—that lies beneath. This excerpt demonstrates Stevenson’s heightening of tension as Dr Jekyll’s friend, the lawyer Utterson, attempts to unravel the mystery of his friend’s location and the identity of the mysterious Mr Hyde.

Excerpt from The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde

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Mr Utterson stepped out and touched him on the shoulder as he passed. “Mr Hyde, I think?” Mr Hyde shrank back with a hissing intake of the breath. But his fear was only momentary; and though he did not look the lawyer in the face, he answered coolly enough: “That is my name. What do you want?”

“I see you are going in,” returned the lawyer. “I am an old friend of Mr Jekyll’s—Mr Utterson, of Gaunt Street—you must have heard my name; and meeting you so conveniently, I thought you might admit me.”

“You will not find Dr Jekyll; he is from home,” replied Mr Hyde, blowing in the key. And then suddenly, but still without looking up, “How did you know me?” he asked.

“On your side,” said Mr Utterson, “will you do me a favour?”

“With pleasure,” replied the other. “What shall it be?”

“Will you let me see your face?” asked the lawyer.

Mr Hyde appeared to hesitate; and then, as if upon some sudden reflection, fronted about with an air of defiance; and the pair stared at each other pretty fixedly for a few seconds. “Now I shall know you again,” said Mr Utterson. “It may be useful.”

“Yes,” returned Mr Hyde, “it is as well we have met and à propos, you should have my address.” And he gave a number of a street in Soho.

“Good God!” thought Mr Utterson, “can he too have been thinking of the will?” But he kept his feelings to himself, and only grunted in acknowledgment of the address.

“And now,” said the other, “how did you know me?”

“By description,” was the reply.

“Whose description?”

“We have common friends,” said Mr Utterson.

“Common friends!” echoed Mr Hyde, a little hoarsely. “Who are they?”

“Jekyll, for instance,” said the lawyer.

“He never told you,” cried Mr Hyde, with a flush of anger. “I did not think you would have lied.”

“Come,” said Mr Utterson, “that is not fitting language.”

The other snarled aloud into a savage laugh; and the next moment, with extraordinary quickness, he had unlocked the door and disappeared into the house.

The lawyer stood awhile when Mr Hyde had left him, the picture of disquietude. Then he began slowly to mount the street, pausing every step or two, and putting his hand to his brow like a man in mental perplexity. The problem he was thus debating as he walked was one of a class that is rarely solved. Mr Hyde was pale and dwarfish; he gave an impression of deformity without any namable malformation, he had a displeasing smile, he had borne himself to the lawyer with a sort of murderous mixture of timidity and boldness, and he spoke with a husky, whispering and somewhat broken voice, — all these were points against him; but not all of these together could explain the hitherto unknown disgust, loathing and fear with which Mr Utterson regarded him. “There must he something else,” said the perplexed gentleman. “There is something more, if I could find a name for it. God bless me, the man seems hardly human! Something troglodytic, shall we say? or can it be the old story of Dr Fell? or is it the mere radiance of a foul soul that thus transpires through, and transfigures, its clay continent? The last, I think; for, O my poor old Harry Jekyll, if ever I read Satan’s signature upon a face, it is on that of your new friend!”

Round the corner from the by street there was a square of ancient, handsome houses, now for the most part decayed from their high estate, and let in flats and chambers to all sorts and conditions of men: map-engravers, architects, shady lawyers, and the agents of obscure enterprises. One house, however, second from the corner, was still occupied entire; and at the door of this, which wore a great air of wealth and comfort, though it was now plunged in darkness except for the fan-light, Mr Utterson stopped and knocked. A well-dressed, elderly servant opened the door.

“Is Dr Jekyll at home, Poole?” asked the lawyer.

“I will see, Mr Utterson,” said Poole, admitting the visitor, as he spoke, into a large, low-roofed, comfortable hall, paved with flags, warmed (after the fashion of a country house) by a bright, open fire, and furnished with costly cabinets of oak. “Will you wait here by the fire, sir? or shall I give you a light in the dining-room?”

“Here, thank you,” said the lawyer; and he drew near and leaned on the tall fender. This hall, in which he was now left alone, was a pet fancy of his friend the doctor’s; and Utterson himself was wont to speak of it as the pleasantest room in London. But to-night there was a shudder in his blood; the face of Hyde sat heavy on his memory; he felt (what was rare in him) a nausea and distaste of life; and in the gloom of his spirits, he seemed to read a menace in the flickering of the firelight on the polished cabinets and the uneasy starting of the shadow on the roof. He was ashamed of his relief when Poole presently returned to announce that Dr Jekyll was gone out.

“I saw Mr Hyde go in by the old dissecting-room door, Poole,” he said. “Is that right, when Dr Jekyll is from home?”

“Quite right, Mr Utterson, sir,” replied the servant. “Mr Hyde has a key.”

“Your master seems to repose a great deal of trust in that young man, Poole,” resumed the other, musingly.

“Yes, sir, he do indeed,” said Poole. “We have all orders to obey him.”

“I do not think I ever met Mr Hyde ?” asked Utterson.

“O dear no, sir. He never dines here,” replied the butler. “Indeed, we see very little of him on this side of the house; he mostly comes and goes by the laboratory.”

“Well, good-night, Poole.”

“Good-night, Mr Utterson.”

And the lawyer set out homeward with a very heavy heart. “Poor Harry Jekyll,” he thought, “my mind misgives me he is in deep waters! He was wild when he was young; a long while ago, to be sure; but in the law of God there is no statute of limitations. Ah, it must be that; the ghost of some old sin, the cancer of some concealed disgrace; punishment coming, pede claudo, years after memory has forgotten and self-love condoned the fault.” And the lawyer, scared by the thought, brooded awhile on his own past, groping in all the corners of memory, lest by chance some Jack-in-the-Box of an old iniquity should leap to light there. His past was fairly blameless; few men could read the rolls of their life with less apprehension; yet he was humbled to the dust by the many ill things he had done, and raised up again into a sober and fearful gratitude by the many that he had come so near to doing, yet avoided. And then by a return on his former subject, he conceived a spark of hope. “This Master Hyde, if he were studied,” thought he, “must have secrets of his own: black secrets, by the look of him; secrets compared to which poor Jekyll’s worst would be like sunshine. Things cannot continue as they are. It turns me quite cold to think of this creature stealing like a thief to Harry’s bedside; poor Harry, what a wakening! And the danger of it! for if this Hyde suspects the existence of the will, he may grow impatient to inherit. Ay, I must put my shoulder to the wheel—if Jekyll will but let me,” he added, “if Jekyll will only let me.” For once more he saw before his mind’s eye, as clear as a transparency, the strange clauses of the will.

Source: public domain.

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