Charles Dickens.] ALL THE YEAR ROUND. [January 28, 1860.] 331

his eyes, so regardless and forgetful of earth.
He was of an olive black, his lips were dark, his
eyes were ashy, and lie wore a blanket, which
left half his bony chest bare. This was a young
howling Dervish; perhaps some pasha's eunuch
turned fanatic, who, having abandoned himself
headlong to austerities, and to the hideous de-
moniacal rites of his fraternity (in which foolish tra-
vellers find only matter for ridicule), had suddenly
been seized by the notion that he had won by
his howls and mortifications the dignity of saint-
hood, and therefore refusing to speak, he sur-
rendered himself to divine influences. Why he
should be imprisoned for this conceit I could
not see, and I looked with pity at the immovable,
imperturbable black enthusiast.

"You have now seen our religious madness,"
said Tricoupi. " You shall next see our pride
sunk into insanity. This is a common form of
Turkish madness."

The cell was unbolted by a brutal-looking
turnkey, who wore a dirty soldier's dress,
and at his approach I observed the mad-
men crouched and trembled. We saw, lean-
ing against the window, seated cross-legged on
a rude divan covered with some coarse shawling,
a venerable and sagacious-looking old man, with
pretematurally bright eyes, and a crisp silvery
beard cascading over his dull purple robe. He
might have been Haroun-al-Rascuid grown old,
or Ali Pasha, the Pasha of Albania, with his head
glued on again, he bore himself so grandly. He
was acting the Sultan: that was his insanity. He
looked at us as we entered, with infinite con-
tempt; he knew we looked upon him as a mere
claimant and pretender to power, but he despised
us. Tricoupi humoured him by making a salaam,
and requested him to write us a firman. He
gave it us, but with the air of a man who, though
confident of greatness, is the object of ridiculous
suspicion. We bowed ourselves out very care-
fully, and with a half spite the malignant
turnkey bolted the doors, for the Sultan was at
times violent and highly dangerous if treated
with any want of respect. Poor old man,
happy in his delusion!

We had just visited one of the dormitories,
when a little peasant child, a cretin, wearing
only a coarse tunic of sackcloth, ran to greet
us. As he leaped up and down with bare feet
upon the stones, kissing our hands, and putting
the hems of our coats to his lips—the brutal
turnkey, laughing all the time at the drollery of
the thing, and at the pleasantly of nature in
giving us such children—Legoff was phreno-
logically feeling the idiot's head, and pointing
with a lecturer's horror to the hollow cup of
forehead, and at the enormous boss of a cere-
bellum. We gave the poor child a piastre,
and he instantly flew off like a deer to buy
bread, crowing and laughing.

"Not half fed," said Legoff.

A moment afterwards, we saw him racing back
to a cell at the opposite corner of the square to
share the bread with his guardian: a tall, hag-
gard Turk, who had remained two years without
speaking, believing himself bewitched. We saw

the child crouching at his feet in the doorway,
smiling as the attentive friend first chewed the
baked rings of bread strewn with grains of
sesame, and then crammed them into his pupil's
mouth, just as if he were feeding a young owl.

It was while we were still watching this
operation—Legoff scornfully, Tricoupi with
assumed bonhomie—that a madman came up and
accosted us. His face, like the rest, wore
the agonised, purgatorial stare of changeless
insanity that some mad faces always wear.

"This," said Tricoupi, "is a most curious
instance of the decay of some regulating mental
principle. Body of Bacchus! He imagines his
name changes every minute to that of some
dead sultan. I will try him."

Tricoupi put the question. The man jogged
his turban, and put his head on one side, as if
trying to listen, or to remember. In a mo-
ment he answered, boldly, " Bajazet." We re-
peated the question slowly; he looked as if he
were watching a turning roulette wheel, and
replied, " Amurath;" a third time, and he said,
"Mahmoud." It was a trifling madness for a
world of eccentric people to shut you up for.
Why not for picture-buying, or coin-collecting,
or walking-stick mania, or for having a fancy
for old china?

We had scarcelv got quit of this madman,
when a thoughtful-looking man, with much of
the air of a gentleman, came up to us, and with
the air of one who has long been embarrassed
with a topic, but at last begins to see daylight
in the distance, said in good Turkish to Dr.
Tricoupi, who patted him on the back, to keep
up his paternal character before the commis-
sioner:

"I have decided on two millions."

I asked what the madman meant by his having
decided on two millions?

The doctor, leaving his mad friend adding up
the two millions on nis brown fingers, told me
that the man was a Turkish doctor who, in a
frenzy, had murdered at once his father, mother,
and two children. The two millions was the
indemnity he had agreed upon, after much re-
flection, as the compensation the Porte was to
pay him for his professional losses during de-
tention. The murders he had quite forgotten,
and his crazed mind was now absorbed in com-
plicated compound addition.

"There," said Tricoupi, pointing with an af-
fectionate smile to a very ugly old Turk, who
was drivelling in the last stage of idiocy in a
corner of the cloister, a little alarmed at the
turnkey, but otherwise not more wise than an old
baboon, " that is the effect of excessive opium.
And here" turning to a lively, healthy-looking
young Turk at his elbow " is an instance of a
cessation from the excessive use of the same
drug; Achmet will soon get his release."

"Allah be praised!" said the young Turk, his
eyes moistening with a sudden gush of grateful
tears.

We next inspected the bath-rooms, where,
upon violent patients and on new comers,
small Niagaras are crushed down from great