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"No, sir," said Alfred. "I think that rather an arbitrary and peevish canon of friend Horace. The AEneid, you know, begins just as he says an epic ought not to begin; and the AEneid is the greatest Latin Epic. In the next place the use of Modesty is to keep a man from writing an epic poem at all but, if he will have that impudence, why then he had better have the courage to plunge into the Castalian stream, like Virgil and Lucan, not crawl in funking and holding on by the Muse's ap.r.o.n-string.

But--excuse me--quorsum haec tam putida tendunt? What have the Latin poets to do with this modern's sanity or insanity?"

Mr. Abbott snorted contemptuously in support of the query. But Dr.

Eskell smiled, and said: "Continue to answer me as intelligently, and you may find it has a great deal to do with it."

Alfred took this hint, and said artfully, "Mine was a thoughtless remark: of course a gentleman of your experience can test the mind on any subject, however trivial." He added piteously, "Still, if you would but leave the poets, who are all half crazy themselves, and examine me in the philosophers of Antiquity. Surely it would be a higher criterion."

Dr. Wycherley explained in a patronising whisper, "He labours under an abnormal contempt for poetry, dating from his attack. Previously to that he actually obtained a prize poem himself."

"Well, doctor, and after that am I wrong to despise poetry?"

They might have comprehended this on paper, but spoken it was too keen for them all three. The visitors stared. Dr. Wycherley came to their aid "You might examine my young friend for hours and not detect the one crevice in the brilliancy of his intellectual armour."

The maniac made a face as one that drinketh verjuice suddenly.

"For pity's sake, doctor, don't be so inaccurate. Say a spot on the brilliancy, or a crevice in the armour; but not a crevice in the brilliancy. My good friend here, gentlemen, deals in conjectural certificates and broken metaphors. He dislocates more tropes, to my sorrow, than even his friend Shakespeare, whom he thinks a greater philosopher than Aristotle, and who calls the murder of an individual sleeper the murder of sleep, confounding the concrete with the abstract, and then talks of taking arms against a sea of troubles; query, a cork jacket and a flask of brandy?"

"Well, Mr. Hardie," said Dr. Eskell, rather feebly, "let me tell you those pa.s.sages, which so shock your _peculiar_ notions, are among the most applauded."

"Very likely, sir," retorted the maniac, whose logic was up; "but applauded only in a nation where the _floods_ clap their hands every Sunday morning, and we all pray for peace, giving as our exquisite reason that we have got the G.o.d of hosts on our side in war."

Mr. Abbott, the other commissioner, had endured all this chat with an air of weary indifference. He now said to Dr. Wycherley, "I wish to put to you a question or two in private."

Alfred was horribly frightened: this was the very dodge that had ruined him at Silverton House. "Oh no, gentlemen," he cried imploringly. "Let me have fair play. You have given me no secret audience; then why give my accuser one? I am charged with a single delusion; for mercy's sake, go to the point at once, and examine me on that head."

"Now you talk sense," said Mr. Abbott; as if the previous topics had been chosen by Alfred.

"But that will excite him," objected Dr. Eskell? "it always does excite them."

"It excites the insane, but not the sane," said Alfred. "So there is another test; you will observe whether it excites me." Then, before they could interrupt him, he glided on. "The supposed hallucination is this: I strongly suspect my father, a bankrupt--and therefore dishonest--banker, of having somehow misappropriated a sum of fourteen thousand pounds, which sum is known to have been brought from India by one Captain Dodd, and has disappeared."

"Stop a minute," said Mr. Abbott. "Who knows it besides you?"

"The whole family of the Dodds. They will show you his letter from India, announcing his return with the money."

"Where do they live?"

"Albion Villa, Barkington."

Mr. Abbott noted the

Dr. Eskell nodded a.s.sent, knowing nothing about the matter.

"Pray, doctor, was I the only person who saw this vision?" inquired Alfred slily.

"I conclude so," said Wycherley, with an admirable smile.

"But why do you conclude so? Because you are one of those who reason in a circle of a.s.sumptions. Now it happens that Captain Dodd was seen and felt on that occasion by three persons besides myself."

"Name them," said Mr. Abbott sharply.

"A policeman called Reynolds, another policeman, whose name I don't know, and Miss Julia Dodd. The policemen helped me lift Captain Dodd off the gra.s.s, sir; Julia met us chose by, and we four carried Dr.

Wycherhey's phantom home together to Albion Villa."

Mr. Abbott noted down all the names, and then turned to Dr. Wycherley.

"What do you say to that?"

"I say it is a very important statement," said the doctor blandly; "and that I am sure my young friend would not advance it unless he was firmly persuaded of its reality."

"Much obliged, doctor; and you would not contradict me so rashly in a matter I know all about and you know nothing about, if it was not your fixed habit to found facts on theories instead of theories on facts."

"There, that is enough," said Mr. Abbott. "I have brought you both to an issue at last. I shall send to Barkington, and examine the policemen and the Dodds."

"Oh, thank you, sir," cried Alfred with emotion. "If you once apply genuine tests like that to my case, I shall not be long in prison."

"Prison?" said Wycherley reproachfully.

"Have you any complaint, then, to make of your treatment here?" inquired Dr. Eskell.

"No, no, sir," said Alfred warmly. "Dr. Wycherley is the very soul of humanity. Here are no tortures, no handcuffs nor leg-locks, no brutality, no insects that murder Sleep--without offence to Logic. In my last asylum the attendants inflicted violence, here they are only allowed to endure it. And, gentlemen, I must tell you a n.o.ble trait in my enemy there: nothing can make him angry with madmen; their lies, their groundless and narrow suspicions of him, their deplorable ingrat.i.tude to him, of which I see examples every day that rile me on his account; all these things seem to glide off him, baffled by the infinite kindness of his heart and the incomparable sweetness of his temper; and he returns the duffers good for evil with scarcely an effort."

At this unexpected tribute the water stood in the doctor's eyes. It was no more than the truth; but this was the first maniac he had met intelligent enough to see his good qualities clearly and express them eloquently.

"In short," continued Alfred, "to be happy in his house all a man wants is to be insane. But, as I am not insane, I am miserable; no convict, no galley slave is so wretched as I am, gentlemen. And what is my crime?"

"Well, well," said Dr. Eskell kindly, "I think it likely you will not be very long in confinement." They then civilly dismissed him; and on his departure asked Dr. Wycherley his candid opinion. Dr. Wycherley said he was now nearly cured; his ability to discuss his delusion without excitement was of itself a proof of that. But in another month he would be better still. The doctor concluded his remarks thus--

"However, gentlemen, you have heard him: now judge for yourselves whether anybody can be as clever as he is, without the presence of more or less abnormal excitement of the organs of intelligence."

It was a bright day for Alfred; he saw he had made an excellent impression on the Commissioners, and, as luck does not always come single, after many vain attempts to get a letter posted to Julia, he found this very afternoon a nurse was going away next day. He offered her a guinea, and she agreed to post a letter. Oh the hapiness it was to the poor prisoner to write it, and unburden his heart and tell his wrongs. He kept his manhood for his enemies; his tears fell on the paper he sent to his forlorn bride. He had no misgivings of her truth; he judged her by himself: gave her credit for anxiety, but not for doubt.

He concluded a long, ardent, tender letter by begging her to come and see him, and, if refused admission, to publish his case in the newspapers, and employ a lawyer to proceed against all the parties concerned in his detention. Day after day he waited for an answer to his letter; none came. Then he began to be sore perplexed, and torn with agonising doubts. What if her mind was poisoned too! What if she thought him mad! What if some misfortune had befallen her! What if she had believed him dead, and her heart had broken! Hitherto he had seen his own trouble chiefly; but now he began to think day and night on hers; and though he ground on for his degree not to waste time, and not to be driven mad, yet it was almost superhuman labour; sighs issued from his labouring breast while his hard, indomitable brain laboured away, all uphill, at Aristotle's Divisions and Definitions.

On the seventh day, the earliest the mad statute allowed, the two Commissioners returned, and this time Mr. Abbott took the lead, and told him that the policeman Reynolds had left the force, and the Dodds had left the town, and were in London, but their address not known.

At this Alfred was much agitated. She was alive, and perhaps near him.

"I have heard a good deal of your story," said Mr. Abbott, "and coupling it with what we have seen of you, we think your relatives have treated you, and a young lady of whom everybody speaks with respect--"

"G.o.d bless you for saying that! G.o.d bless you!"

"--treated you both, I say, with needless severity."

Dr. Eskell then told him the result of the Special Commission, now closed. "I believe you to be cured," said he; "and Mr. Abbott has some doubts whether you were ever positively insane. We shall lay your case before the Board at once, and the Board will write to the party who signed the order, and propose to him to discharge you at once."

At this magnificent project Alfred's countenance fell, and he stared with astonishment. "What! have you not the power to do me justice without soliciting Injustice to help you?"

"The Board has the power," said Dr. Eskell; "but for many reasons they exercise it with prudence and reserve. Besides, it is only fair to those who have signed the order, to give them the graceful office of liberating the patient; it paves the way to reconciliation."

Alfred sighed. The Commissioners, to keep up his heart, promised to send him copies of their correspondence with the person who had signed the order. "Then," said Mr. Abbott kindly, "you will see your case is not being neglected."