The Black Baronet; or, The Chronicles Of Ballytrain Part 92

"Upon what principle do you account for that?" asked the stranger. "To me it would appear that the reverse of the proposition ought to hold true."

"That may be," replied the other; "but no man can form a correct opinion of insane persons who has not mingled with them, or had them under his care. The contiguity of reason--I mean in the persons of those who approach them--always exercises a dangerous influence upon lunatics; and on this account, I sometimes place those who are less insane as keepers upon such as are decidedly so."

"Does not that, sir, seem very like setting the blind to lead the blind?"

"No," replied the other, with a heavy, I heartless laugh, "your a.n.a.logy fails; it is rather like setting a man with one eye to guide another who has none."

"But why should not a man who has two guide him better?"

"Because the consciousness that there is but the one eye between both of them, will make him proceed more cautiously."

"But that in the blind is an act of reason," replied the stranger, "which cannot be applied to the insane, in whom reason is deficient."

"But where reason does not exist," said the doctor, "we must regulate them by the pa.s.sions."

"By the exercise of which pa.s.sion do you gain the greatest ascendency over them?" asked the stranger.

"By fear, of course. We can do nothing, at least very little, without inspiring terror."

"Ah," thought the stranger, "I have now got the key to his conduct!--But, sir," he added, "we never fear and love the same object at the same time."

"True enough, sir," replied the ruffian; "but who could or ought to calculate upon the attachment of a madman? Boys are corrected more frequently than men, because their reason is not developed: and those in whom it does not exist, or in whom it has been impaired, must be subjected to the same discipline. Terror, besides, is the principle upon which reason itself, and all society, are governed."

"But suppose I had a brother, now, or a relative, might I not hesitate to place him in an establishment conducted on principles which I condemn?"

"As to that, sir," replied the fellow, who, expecting a patient, feared that he had gone too far, "our system is an adaptable one; at least, our application of it varies according to circ.u.mstances. As our first object is cure, we must necessarily allow ourselves considerable lat.i.tude of experiment until we hit upon the right key. This being found, the process of recovery, when it is possible, may be conducted with as much mildness as the absence of reason will admit. We are mild, when we can, and severe only where we must."

"Shuffling scoundrel!" thought the stranger. "I perceive in this language the double dealing of an unprincipled villain.--Would you have any objection, sir," he said, "that I should look through your establishment?"

"I can conduct you through the convalescent wards," replied the doctor; "but, as I said, we find that the appearance of strangers--which is what I meant by the contiguity of reason--is attended with very bad, and sometimes deplorable consequences. Under all circ.u.mstances it r.e.t.a.r.ds a cure, under others occasions a relapse, and in some accelerates the malady so rapidly that it becomes hopeless. You may see the convalescent ward, however--that is, if you wish."

"You will oblige me," said the stranger.

"Well, then," said he, "if you will remain here a moment, I will send a gentleman who will accompany you, and explain the characters of some of the patients, should you desire it, and also the cause of their respective maladies."

He then disappeared, and in a few minutes a mild, intelligent, gentlemanly man, of modest and una.s.suming manners, presented himself, and said he would feel much pleasure in showing him the convalescent side of the house. The stranger, however, went out and brought old Corbet in from the carriage, where he and the officers had been sitting; and this he did at Corbet's own request.

It is not our intention to place before our readers any lengthened description of this gloomy temple of departed reason. Every one who enters a lunatic asylum for the first time, must feel a wild and indescribable emotion, such as he has never before experienced, and which amounts to an extraordinary sense of solemnity and fear. Nor do the sensations of the stranger rest here. He feels as if he were surrounded by something sacred as well as melancholy, something that creates at once pity, reverence, and awe. Indeed, so strongly ant.i.thetical to each other are his first impressions, that a kind of confusion arises in his mind, and he begins to fear that his senses have been affected by the atmosphere of the place. That a shock takes place which slightly disarranges the faculty of thought, and generates strong but erroneous impressions, is still more clearly established by the fact that the visitor, for a considerable time after leaving an asylum, can scarcely rid himself of the belief that every person he meets is insane.

The stranger, on entering the long room in which the convalescents were a.s.sembled, felt, in the silence of the patients, and in their vague and fantastic movements, that he was in a position where novelty, in general the source of pleasure, was here a.s.sociated only with pain. Their startling looks, the absence of interest in some instances, and its intensity in others, at the appearance of strangers, without any intelligent motive in either case, produced a feeling that seemed to bear the character of a disagreeable dream.

"All the patients here," said his conductor, "are not absolutely in a state of convalescence. A great number of them are; but we also allow such confirmed lunatics as are harmless to mingle with them. There is scarcely a profession, or a pa.s.sion, or a vanity in life, which has not here its representative. Law, religion, physic, the arts, the sciences, all contribute their share to this melancholy picture gallery. Avarice, love, ambition, pride, jealousy, having overgrown the force of reason, are here, as its ideal skeletons, wild and gigantic--fretting, gambolling, moping, grinning, raving, and vaporing--each wrapped in its own Vision, and indifferent to all the influence of the collateral faculties. There, now, is a man, moping about, the very picture of stolidity; observe how his heavy head hangs down until his chin rests upon his breastbone, his mouth open and almost dribbling. That man, sir, so unpoetical and idiotic in appearance, imagines himself the author of Beattie's 'Minstrel' He is a Scotchman, and I shall call him over."

"Come here, Sandy, speak to this gentleman."

Sandy, without raising his lack-l.u.s.tre eye, came over and replied, "Aw--ay--'Am the author o' Betty's Menstrel;" and having uttered this piece of intelligence, he shuffled across the room, dragging one foot after the other, at about a quarter of a minute per step. Never was poor Beattie so libellously represented.

"Do you see that round-faced, good-humored looking man, with a decent frieze coat on?" said their conductor. "He's a wealthy and respectable farmer from the county of Kilkenny, who imagines that he is Christ. His name is Rody Rafferty."

"Come here, Rody."

Rody came over, and looking at the stranger, said, "Arra, now, do you know who I am? Troth, I go bail you don't."

"No," replied the stranger, "I do not; but I hope you will tell me."

"I'm Christ," replied Rody; "and, upon my word, if you don't get out o'

this, I'll work a miracle on you."

"Why," asked the stranger, "what will you do?"

"Troth, I'll turn you into a blackin' brush, and polish my shoes wid you. You were at Barney's death, too."

The poor man had gone deranged, it seemed, by the violent death of his only child--a son.

"There's another man," said the conductor; "that little fellow with the angry face. He is a shoemaker, who went mad on the score of humanity. He took a strong feeling of resentment against all who had flat feet, and refused to make shoes for them."

"How was that?" inquired the stranger.

"Why, sir," said the other, smiling, "he said that they murdered the clocks (beetles), and he looked upon every man with flat feet as an inhuman villain, who deserves, he says, to have his feet chopped off, and to be compelled to dance a hornpipe three times a day on his stumps."

"Who is that broad-shouldered man," asked the stranger, "dressed in rusty black, with the red head?"

"He went mad," replied the conductor, "on a principle of religious charity. He is a priest from the county of Wexford, who had been called in to baptize the child of a Protestant mother, which, having done, he seized a tub, and placing it on the child's neck, killed it; exclaiming, 'I am now sure of having sent one soul to heaven.'"

"You are not without poets here, of course?" said the stranger.

"We have, unfortunately," replied the other, "more individuals of that cla.s.s than we can well manage. They ought to have an asylum for themselves. There's a fellow, now, he in the tattered jacket and nightcap, who has written a heroic poem, of eighty-six thousand verses, which he ent.i.tles 'Balaam's a.s.s, or the Great Unsaddled.' Shall I call him over?"

"Oh, for heaven's sake, no," replied the stranger; "keep me from the poets."

"There is one of the other species," replied the gentleman, "the thin, red-eyed fellow, who grinds his teeth. He fancies himself a wit and a satirist, and is the author of an unpublished poem, called 'The Smoking Dunghill, or Parna.s.sus in a Fume.' He published several things, which were justly attacked on account of their dulness, and he is now in an awful fury against all the poets of the day, to every one of whom he has given an appropriate position on the sublime pedestal, which he has, as it were, with his own hands, erected for them. He certainly ought to be the best constructor of a dunghill in the world, for he deals in nothing but dirt. He refuses to wash his hands, because, he says, it would disqualify him from giving the last touch to his poem and his characters."

"Have you philosophers as well as poets here?" asked the stranger.

"Oh dear, yes, sir. We have poetical philosophers, and philosophical poets; but, I protest to heaven, the wisdom of Solomon, or of an archangel, could not decide the difference between their folly. There's a man now, with the old stocking in his hand--it is one of his own, for you may observe that he has one leg bare--who is pacing up and down in a deep thinking mood. That man, sir, was set mad by a definition of his own making."

"Well, let us hear it," said the stranger.

"Why, sir, he imagines that he has discovered a definition for 'nothing.' The definition, however, will make you smile."

"And what, pray, is it?"

"Nothing," he says, "is--a footless stocking without a leg; and maintains that he ought to hold the first rank as a philosopher for having invented the definition, and deserves a pension from the crown."

"Who are these two men dressed in black, walking arm in arm?" asked the stranger. "They appear to be clergymen."

"Yes, sir," replied his conductor, "so they are; two celebrated polemical controversialists, who, when they were at large, created by their attacks, each upon the religion of the other, more ill-will, rancor and religious animosity, than either of their religions, with all their virtues, could remove. It is impossible to describe the evil they did. Ever since they came here, however, they are like brothers. They were placed in the same room, each in a strong strait-waistcoat, for the s.p.a.ce of three months; but on being allowed to walk about, they became sworn friends, and now amuse themselves more than any other two in the establishment. They indulge in immoderate fits of laughter, look each other knowingly in the face, wink, and run the forefinger up the nose, after which their mirth bursts out afresh, and they laugh until the tears come down their cheeks."