much like to see him, and especial when his mind is
disturbed."

"May I come also?" asked Lord Godalming.

"Me too?" said Quincey Morris. "May I come?" said Harker. I nodded,
and we all went down the passage together.

We found him in a state of considerable excitement, but far more
rational in his speech and manner than I had ever seen him. There was
an unusual understanding of himself, which was unlike anything I had
ever met with in a lunatic, and he took it for granted that his
reasons would prevail with others entirely sane. We all five went
into the room, but none of the others at first said anything. His
request was that I would at once release him from the asylum and send
him home. This he backed up with arguments regarding his complete
recovery, and adduced his own existing sanity.

"I appeal to your friends," he said, "they will, perhaps, not mind
sitting in judgement on my case. By the way, you have not introduced
me."

I was so much astonished, that the oddness of introducing a madman in
an asylum did not strike me at the moment, and besides, there was a
certain dignity in the man's manner, so much of the habit of equality,
that I at once made the introduction, "Lord Godalming, Professor Van
Helsing, Mr. Quincey Morris, of Texas, Mr. Jonathan Harker, Mr.
Renfield."

He shook hands with each of them, saying in turn, "Lord Godalming, I
had the honour of seconding your father at the Windham; I grieve to
know, by your holding the title, that he is no more. He was a man
loved and honoured by all who knew him, and in his youth was, I have
heard, the inventor of a burnt rum punch, much patronized on Derby
night. Mr. Morris, you should be proud of your great state. Its
reception into the Union was a precedent which may have far-reaching
effects hereafter, when the Pole and the Tropics may hold alliance to
the Stars and Stripes. The power of Treaty may yet prove a vast
engine of enlargement, when the Monroe doctrine takes its true place
as a political fable. What shall any man say of his pleasure at
meeting Van Helsing? Sir, I make no apology for dropping all forms of
conventional prefix. When an individual has revolutionized
therapeutics by his discovery of the continuous evolution of brain
matter, conventional forms are unfitting, since they would seem to
limit him to one of a class. You, gentlemen, who by nationality, by
heredity, or by the possession of natural gifts, are fitted to hold
yo