sane
asylum, very exclusive, very quiet, very aristocratic, indeed,
receiving none but patients of the highest rank; that this retreat was
situated on the wooded banks of a charming lake in one of the most
healthy and beautiful neighborhoods of East Feliciana; that he had
originally come down to the city to engage the services of some young
physician of talent as his assistant, and finally, that he would be
delighted, enraptured if "his deliverer, his friend, his son," would
accept the post.

Now Traverse particularly wished to study the various phases of mental
derangement, a department of his professional education that had
hitherto been opened to him only through books.

He explained this to his old friend, the French physician, who
immediately went off into ecstatic exclamations of joy as, "Good!
Great! Grand!" and "I shall now repay my good child! my dear son! for
his so excellent skill!"

The terms of the engagement were soon arranged, and Traverse prepared
to accompany his new friend to his "beautiful retreat," the private
madhouse. But Traverse wrote to his mother and to Clara in Virginia,
and also to Herbert Greyson in Mexico, to apprise them of his good
fortune.

CHAPTER XXVI.

THE MYSTERIOUS MANIAC.

Stay, jailer, stay, and hear my woe;
She is not mad, who kneels to thee,
For what I am, full well I know,
And what I was, and what should be;
I'll rave no more in proud despair--
My language shall be calm tho' sad
But yet I'll truly, firmly swear,
I am not mad! no, no, not mad!

--M.G. LEWIS

It was at the close of a beautiful day in early spring that Traverse
Rocke, accompanying the old doctor and the old sister, reached the
grove on the borders of the beautiful lake upon the banks of which was
situated the "Calm Retreat."

A large, low, white building surrounded with piazzas and shaded by
fragrant and flowering southern trees, it looked like the luxurious
country seat of some wealthy merchant or planter rather than a prison
for the insane.

Doctor St. Jean conducted his young assistant into a broad and cool
hall on each side of which doors opened into spacious rooms, occupied
by the proprietor and his household. The cells of the patients, as it
appeared were up-stairs. The country doctor and the matron who had been
in charge during the absence of the proprietor and his sister now came
forward to welcome the party and r