sicians. It seemed to
him that they had the happy look of people who had reached the desired
goal. Vogotzine, coughing nervously, kept close to the Prince and felt
very ill at ease. Andras, on the contrary, found great difficulty in
realizing that he was really among lunatics.

"See," said Dr. Sims, pointing out an old gentleman, dressed in the
style of 1840, like an old-fashioned lithograph of a beau of the time
of Gavarni, "that man has been more than thirty-five years in the
institution. He will not change the cut of his garments, and he is very
careful to have his tailor make his clothes in the same style he dressed
when he was young. He is very happy. He thinks that he is the enchanter
Merlin, and he listens to Vivian, who makes appointments with him under
the trees."

As they passed the old man, his neck imprisoned in a high stock, his
surtout cut long and very tight in the waist, and his trousers very full
about the hips and very close about the ankles, he bowed politely.

"Good-morning, Doctor Sims! Good-morning, Doctor Fargeas!"

Then, as the director of the establishment approached to speak, he
placed a finger upon his lips:

"Hush," he said. "She is there! Don't speak, or she will go away." And
he pointed with a sort of passionate veneration to an elm where Vivian
was shut up, and whence she would shortly emerge.

"Poor devil!" murmured Vogotzine.

This was not what Zilah thought, however. He wondered if this happy
hallucination which had lasted so many years, these eternal love-scenes
with Vivian, love-scenes which never grew stale, despite the years and
the wrinkles, were not the ideal form of happiness for a being condemned
to this earth. This poetical monomaniac lived with his dreams realized,
finding, in an asylum of Vaugirard, all the fascinations and chimeras
of the Breton land of golden blossoms and pink heather, all the
intoxicating, languorous charm of the forest of Broceliande.

"He has within his grasp what Shakespeare was content only to dream of.
Insanity is, perhaps, simply the ideal realized:"

"Ah!" replied Dr. Fargeas, "but the real never loses its grip. Why does
this monomaniac preserve both the garments of his youth, which prevent
him from feeling his age, and the dream of his life, which consoles
him for his lost reason? Because he is rich. He can pay the tailor who
dresses him, the rent of the pavilion he inhabits by himself, and the
special servants who serve him. If he were p