hand, went out and
made a complaint to the guard. This guard was composed of Neapolitan
soldiers, one of whom gladly availing himself of the opportunity of
exercising authority over a Sicilian, seized him by the collar,
whereupon Lucca struck his assailant. The other soldiers came to the aid
of their comrade, and a violent struggle ensued, in the course of which
Lucca received a blow on the head which felled him on the ground. He was
conveyed to prison in a state of insensibility and placed in a cell,
where he was left for the night. Next morning, when it was intended to
conduct him before the judge for examination, he was found to be
perfectly insane.

This young man's madness had taken a very poetic turn. Sometimes he
fancied himself to be Tasso; at another time Shakspeare or
Chateaubriand. At the time of my visit to the asylum, he was deeply
impressed with the delusion of imagining himself to be Dante. When we
approached him, he was pacing up and down an alley in the garden,
pleasantly shaded by trees. He held in one hand a pencil, and in the
other some slips of paper, and he was busily engaged in composing the
thirty-third Canto of his Inferno. At intervals he rubbed his forehead,
as if to collect his scattered thoughts, and then he would note down
some lines of the poem.

Profiting by a pause, during which he seemed to emerge from his profound
abstraction, I stepped up to him, saying, "I understand, sir, that I
have the honor of addressing myself to Dante."

"That is my name," replied Lucca. "What have you to say to me?"

"To assure you how much pleasure I shall feel in making your
acquaintance. I proceeded to Florence, in the hope of finding you there,
but you had left that city."

"Then," said Lucca, with that sharp, quick sort of utterance often
observable in insane persons, "then, it seems, you were not aware of my
having been driven from Florence, and that they charged me with having
stolen the money of the Republic? Dante accused of robbery, forsooth! I
slung my sword at my side, and having collected the first seven Cantos
of my poem, I departed."

This strange hallucination excited my interest, and, pursuing the
conversation, I said, "I hoped to have overtaken you between Fettre and
Montefeltro."

"Oh! I staid only a very short time there," said he. "Why did you not go
to Ravenna?"

"I did go there, and found only your tomb!"

"But I was not in it," observed he. "Do you know how I escaped?"

I