Part 49 (1/2)
”Did you tell me this lady is one of the incurables?” inquired Traverse, when they had left her apartment.
”Bah! yes, poor girl, vera incurable, as my sister would say.”
”Yet she appears to me to be perfectly sane, as well as exceedingly beautiful and interesting.”
”Ah, bah; my excellent, my admirable, my inexperienced young friend, that is all you know of lunatics! With more or less violence of a.s.sertion, they every one insist upon their sanity, just as criminals protest their innocence. Ah, bah! you shall go into every cell in this ward and find not one lunatic among them,” sneered the old doctor, as he led the way into the next little room.
It was indeed as he had foretold, and Traverse Rocke found himself deeply affected by the melancholy, the earnest and sometimes the violent manner in which the poor unfortunates protested their sanity and implored or demanded to be restored to home and friends.
”You perceive,” said the doctor, with a dry laugh, ”that they are none of them crazy?”
”I see,” said Traverse, ”but I also detect a very great difference between that lovely woman in the south cell and these other inmates.”
”Bah! bah! bah! She is more beautiful, more accomplished, more refined than the others, and she is in one of her lucid intervals! That is all; but as to a difference between her insanity and that of the other patients, it lies in this, that she is the most hopelessly mad of the whole lot! She has been mad eighteen years!”
”Is it possible?” exclaimed Traverse, incredulously.
”She lost her reason at the age of sixteen, and she is now thirty-four; you can calculate!”
”It is amazing and very sorrowful! How beautiful she is!”
”Yes; her beauty was a fatal gift. It is a sad story. Ah, it is a sad story. You shall hear it when we get through.”
”I can connect no idea of woman's frailty with that refined and intellectual face,” said Traverse coldly.
”Ah, bah! you are young! you know not the world! you, my innocent, my pious young friend!” said the old doctor, as they crossed the hall to go into the next wing of the building, in which were situated the men's wards.
Traverse found nothing that particularly interested him in this department, and when they had concluded their round of visits and were seated together in the old doctor's study, Traverse asked him for the story of his beautiful patient.
The doctor shrugged his shoulders.
”It is a story miserable, as I told you before. A gentleman, ill.u.s.trious, from Virginia, an officer high in the army, and distinguished in the war, he brought this woman to me nearly three years ago. He informed me that--oh, bien! I had better tell you the story in my own manner. This young lady, Mademoiselle Mont de St.
Pierre, is of a family n.o.ble and distinguished--a relative of this officer, ill.u.s.trious and brave. At fifteen Mademoiselle met a man, handsome and without honor. Ah, bah! you understand! at sixteen the child became a fallen angel! She lost her reason through sorrow and shame. This relative--this gentleman, ill.u.s.trious and n.o.ble, tender and compa.s.sionate--took her to the seclusion of his country house, where she lived in elegance, luxury and honor. But as the years pa.s.sed her malady increased; her presence became dangerous; in a word, the gentleman, distinguished and n.o.ble, saw the advertis.e.m.e.nt of my 'Calm Retreat,' my inst.i.tution incomparable, and he wrote to me. In a word, he liked my terms and brought to me his young relative, so lovely and so unfortunate. Ah! he is a good man, this officer, so gallant, so chivalrous; but she is ungrateful!”
”Ungrateful!”
”Ah, bah! yes; it is the way of lunatics! They ever imagine their best friends to be their worst enemies. The poor, crazed creature fancies that she is the sister-in-law of this officer ill.u.s.trious! She thinks that she is the widow of his elder brother, whom she imagines he murdered, and that she is the mother of children, whom she says he has abducted or destroyed, so that he may enjoy the estate that is her widow's dower and their orphans' patrimony. That is the reason why she insists on being called madame instead of mademoiselle, and we indulge her when we think of it!”
”But all this is very singular!”
”Ah, bah! who can account for a lunatic's fancies? She is the maddest of the whole lot. Sometimes she used to become so violent that we would have to restrain her. But lately, Doctor Wood tells me, she is quite still; that we consider a bad sign; there is always hope for a lunatic until they begin to sink into this state,” said the doctor, with an air of competency.
CHAPTER XXVII.
THE MANIAC'S STORY,
A scheming villain forged the tale That chains me in this dreary cell, My fate unknown, my friends bewail, Oh, doctor, haste that fate to tell!