; affected with
spasmodic motions of the head and limbs; biting and scratching all who
displeased him; and always, when at comparative rest, balancing his
body like a wild animal in a menagerie. His senses were incapable of
being affected by anything not appealing to his personal feelings: a
pistol fired close to his head excited little or no emotion, yet he
heard distinctly the cracking of a walnut, or the touch of a hand upon
the key which kept him captive. The most delicious perfumes, or the
most fetid exhalations, were the same thing to his sense of smell,
because these did not affect, one way or other, his relish for his
food, which was of a disgusting nature, and which he dragged about the
floor like a dog, eating it when besmeared with filth. Like almost all
the lower animals, he was affected by the changes of the weather; but
on some of these occasions, his feelings approached to the human in
their manifestations. When he saw the sun break suddenly from a cloud,
he expressed his joy by bursting into convulsive peals of laughter;
and one morning, when he awoke, on seeing the ground covered with
snow, he leaped out of bed, rushed naked into the garden, rolled
himself over and over in the snow, and stuffing handfuls of it into
his mouth, devoured it eagerly. Sometimes he shewed signs of a true
madness, wringing his hands, gnashing his teeth, and becoming
formidable to those about him. But in other moods, the phenomena of
nature seemed to tranquillise and sadden him. When the severity of the
season, as we are informed by the French physician who had charge of
him, had driven every other person out of the garden, he still
delighted to walk there; and after taking many turns, would seat
himself beside a pond of water. Here his convulsive motions, and the
continual balancing of his whole body, diminished, and gave way to a
more tranquil attitude; his face gradually assumed the character of
sorrow or melancholy reverie, while his eyes were steadfastly fixed on
the surface of the water, and he threw into it, from time to time,
some withered leaves. In like manner, on a moonlight night, when the
rays of the moon entered his room, he seldom failed to awake, and to
place himself at the window. Here he would remain for a considerable
time, motionless, with his neck extended, and his eyes fixed on the
moonlight landscape, and wrapped in a kind of contemplative ecstasy,
the silence of which was interrupted only by profound insp