e eight miles from
B----, where I had seen him; and the doctor declared that if any true
compassion was to be shown him, he should not be again driven into a
condition of wild excitement; but that, if he was to be at peace, and,
after his fashion, happy, he should be left in these woods in perfect
freedom, to do just as he liked; in which case he, the said doctor,
would be responsible for the consequences. Accordingly, the police
authorities were content to leave him to a distant and imperceptible
supervision by the officials of the nearest village, and the result
bore out what the doctor had said. Serapion built himself a little hut,
pretty, and, under the circumstances, comfortable. He made chairs and
tables, wove mats of rushes to lie upon, and laid out a garden where he
grew flowers and vegetables. In all that did not touch the idea that he
was the hermit Serapion who fled into the Theban desert in the days of
the Emperor Decius, and suffered martyrdom in Alexandria, his mind was
completely unaffected. He could carry on the most intellectual
conversation, and often showed traces of the brilliant humour and
charming individuality of character for which he had been remarkable in
his former life. The aforesaid doctor declared him to be completely
incurable, and strongly deprecated all attempts to restore him to the
world and to his former pursuits and duties.

"You will readily understand that I could not drive this anchorite of
mine out of my thoughts, and that I experienced an irresistible longing
to see him again. But just picture to yourselves the excess of my
folly! I had no less an undertaking in my mind than that of attacking
Serapion's fixed idea at its very roots. I read Pinel, Reil, every
conceivable book on insanity which I could lay my hands on. I fondly
believed that it might be reserved for _me_, an amateur psychologist
and doctor, to cast some rays of light into Serapion's darkened
intelligence. And I did not omit, either, to make myself acquainted
with the stories of all the Serapions (there were no fewer than eight
of them) treated of in the histories of saints and martyrs.

"Thus equipped, I set out one fine morning in search of my anchorite.

"I found him working in his garden with hoe and spade, singing a
devotional song. Wild pigeons, for which he had strewed an abundant
supply of food, were fluttering and cooing round him, and a young deer
was peeping through the leaves on the trellis. He was ev