er which
he labored. He proposed to print a copy of a newspaper, and to insert in
it a paragraph announcing that the Emperor of China had been dethroned,
and had renounced the sovereignty on the part of his son and his
descendants. Another patient, whose hallucination consisted in believing
himself to be dead, had his room hung with black crape, and his bed
constructed in the form of a bier. Whenever he arose from his bed, he
was either wrapped in a winding sheet, or in some sort of drapery which
he conceived to be the proper costume for a ghost. This appeared to me
to be a very desperate case, and I asked Count Pisani whether he thought
there was any chance of curing the victim of so extraordinary a
delusion. The count shook his head doubtfully, and observed that his
only hope rested on a scheme he meant shortly to try; which was to
endeavor to persuade the lunatic that the day of judgment had arrived.

As we were quitting this chamber, we heard a loud roaring in another
patient's apartment near at hand. The count asked me whether I had any
wish to see how he managed raving madmen? "None whatever," I replied,
"unless you guarantee my personal safety!" He assured me there was
nothing to fear, and, taking a key from the hand of one of the keepers,
he led the way into a padded chamber. In one corner of the room was a
bed, and stretched upon it lay a man, wearing a strait-waistcoat, which
confined his arms to his sides, and fastened him by the middle of his
body to the bed. I was informed that a quarter of an hour previously,
this man had been seized with such a frightful fit of raving mania that
the keepers were obliged to have recourse to restraint, very rarely
resorted to in that establishment. He appeared to be about thirty years
of age, was exceedingly handsome; he had fine dark eyes, and features of
the antique mould, with the figure of a Hercules. On hearing the door
open, he roared out in a voice of thunder, uttering threats and
imprecations; but, on looking round, his eyes met those of the count,
and his anger softened down into expressions of grief and lamentation.
Count Pisani approached the bed, and, in a mild tone of voice, asked the
patient what he had been doing to render it necessary to place him under
such restraint. "They have taken away my Angelica," replied the maniac;
"they have torn her from me, and I am resolved to be avenged on Medora!"
The unfortunate man imagined himself to be Orlando Furioso, and,