154

HOUSEHOLD WORDS.

[Conducted by

I have frequently witnessed the magical
effect which this air never fails to produce on
the Sicilians; but I never could have con-
ceived anything like the change it wrought
upon these two lunatics. The musician began
to play the air in the time in which it is
usually performed; but the dancers urged
him to play it more and more quickly, till at
length the measure became indescribably
rapid. The dancers marked the tune with
the most perfect precision by snapping their
fingers. After keeping up this rapid move-
ment with surprising energy for a quarter
of an hour, they began to show some symp-
toms of fatigue. The man was the first
to give in, and, overcome by the exertion,
he threw himself on a bench which stood on
one side of the room. Teresa,, however, kept
up a very animated pas seul for several
minutes after the loss of her partner; but at
length she also found herself compelled to
stop. The man was placed on his bed, and
the woman was conducted to her apartment.
Both were so completely overcome by the
violence of their exertions, that Count Pisani
observed he would answer for their remaining
quiet for twenty-four hours to come. As to
the guitarist, he was allowed to go into the
garden to play to his companions.

I was next conducted into a large hall, in
which the patients walk and amuse them-
selves, when wet weather prevents them from
going out. This place was adorned with a
profusion of flowers, growing in pots and
vases, and the walls were covered with fresco
paintings, representing humorous subjects.
The hall contained embroidery frames, spin-
ning-wheels, and even weavers' looms; all
presented traces of the work on which the
lunatics had been engaged. Having passed
through the great hall, I was conducted
to the garden, which was tastefully laid
out, shaded by large spreading trees and
watered by fresh fountains. I was informed
that, during the hours allotted to recreation,
most of the patients may be seen wandering
about the garden separately, and without
holding any communication one with another,
each following the bent of his or her own
particular humour, some noisy and others
silent. One of the most decided character-
istics of madness is the desire of solitude. It
seldom happens that two lunatics enter into
conversation with each other; or, if they do
so, each merely gives utterance to his own
train of thought, without any regard to what
is said by his interlocutor. It is different when
they converse with the strangers who occa-
sionally visit them. They then attend to any
observations addressed to them, and not unfre-
quently make very rational and shrewd replies.

The first patient we met on entering the
garden, was a young man apparently about
six or eight and twenty years of age. Before
he lost his senses, he was one of the most
distinguished advocates in Catania. One
evening, at the theatre, he got involved in

some dispute with a Neapolitan, who, instead
of quietly putting into his pocket the card
which Lucca (as I shall call him) slipped
into his hand, went out and made a complaint
to the guard. This guard was composed of
Neapolitan soldiers, one of whom gladly avail-
ing himself of the opportunity of exercising
authority over a Sicilian, seized him by the
collar, whereupon Lucca struck his assailant.
The other soldiers came to the aid of their
comrade, and a violent struggle ensued, in
the course of which Lucca received a blow on
the head which felled him to the ground.
He was conveyed to prison in a state of in-
sensibility and placed in a cell, where he was
left for the night. Next morning, when it
was intended to conduct him before the judge
for examination, he was found to be perfectly
insane.

This young man's madness had taken a
very poetic turn. Sometimes he fancied him-
self to be Tasso; at another time Shakspeare
or Chateaubriand. At the time of my visit
to the asylum, he was deeply impressed with
the delusion of imagining himself to be Dante.
When we approached him, he was pacing up
and down an alley in the garden, pleasantly
shaded by trees. He held in one hand a
pencil, and in the other some slips of paper,
and he was busily engaged in composing the
thirty-third Canto of his Inferno. At intervals
he rubbed his forehead, as if to collect his
scattered thoughts, and then he would note
down some lines of the poem.

Profiting by a pause, during which he
seemed to emerge from his profound abstrac-
tion, I stepped up to him, saying, " I under-
stand, Sir, that I have the honour of address-
ing myself to Dante."

"That is my name," replied Lucca. " What
have you to say to me?"

"To assure you how much pleasure I shall
feel in making your acquaintance. I pro-
ceeded to Florence, in the hope of finding you
there, but you had left that city."

"Then," said Lucca, with that sharp, quick
sort of utterance often observable in insane
persons, " Then, it seems, you were not aware
of my having been driven from Florence, and
that they charged me with having stolen the
money of the Republic ? Dante accused of
robbery, forsooth! I slung my sword at my
side, and having collected the first seven
Cantos of my poem, I departed."

This strange hallucination excited my
interest, and, pursuing the conversation, I
said, " I hoped to have overtaken you between
Fettre and Montefeltro."

"Oh! I staid only a very short time there,"
said he. " Why did you not go to Ravenna?"

"I did go there, and found only your
tomb!"

"But I was not in it," observed he. " Do
you know how I escaped?"

I replied in the negative.

"I have discovered a mode of restoring
one's life."