revile fools and idiots of every shade and
degree--inveighing against mental imbecility as the height of human
wickedness, and wondering why no one had ever suggested the propriety
of having 'naturals' publicly whipped. I am shocked at myself now, as I
call to mind the extravagance of my anger; and I grieve to say that had
I been for that short interval the proprietor of a private madhouse, I
fear I should have been betrayed into the most unwarrantable cruelties
towards the patients; indeed, what is technically called 'moral
government' would have formed no part of my system.

Meanwhile time was moving on, if not pleasantly, at least steadily; and
already the sun began to decline somewhat--his rays, that before came
vertically, being now slanting as they fell upon the wood. For a while
my attention was drawn off from my miseries by watching the weasels as
they played and sported about me, in the confident belief that I was at
best only a kind of fungus--an excrescence on an oak-tree. One of them
came actually to my feet, and even ran across my instep in his play.
Suddenly the thought ran through me--and with terror--how soon may it
come to pass that I shall only be a miserable skeleton, pecked at by
crows, and nibbled by squirrels! The idea was too dreadful; and as if
the hour had actually come, I screamed out to frighten off the little
creatures, and sent them back scampering into their dens.

'Holloa there! what's the matter?' shouted a deep mellow voice from the
middle of the wood; and before I could reply, a fat, rosy-cheeked man of
about fifty, with a pleasant countenance terminating in a row of double
chins, approached me, but still with evident caution, and halting when
about five paces distant, stood still.

'Who are you?' said I hastily, resolving this time at least to adopt a
different method of effecting my liberation.

'What's all this?' quoth the fat man, shading his eyes with his palm,
and addressing some one behind him, whom I now recognised as my friend
the fool who visited me in the morning.

'I say, sir,' repeated I, in a tone of command somewhat absurd from a
man in my situation, 'who are you, may I ask?'

'The Maire de Givet,' said he pompously, as he drew himself up, and took
a large pinch of snuff with an imposing gravity, while his companion
took off his hat in the most reverent fashion, and bowed down to the
ground.

'Well, Monsieur le Maire, the better fortune mine to fall into such
hand