“Why did not the Master of the universe open the tomb to me in my brilliant youth? Why, at the same time, did He not remove me from you, since you do not love me, and I am making you unhappy?
“Why did I become a mother? To be unhappy—more than unhappy—to leave the children who are so dear to me.... Why do you hate me? Though I stood with my feet in boiling oil, I should still say, I love you!...
“Why did you not let me die? You would be happy,—and I—my troubles would be over.... My dear children would come and play by my grave. I should still be near them—I should still, in the darkness of the grave, hear them say, ‘There is our mother!’ ”[289]
If this woman had fed her mind on the works of Chateaubriand she could not have expressed herself with more poetry or imagination.
“It has been known,” says Tissot, “that a young man, whose tutor had never been able to teach him anything, and who, as the saying is, could not put a noun and an adjective together, spoke Latin fluently, after some days of malignant fever, and developed ideas which till then had not struck him.”[290]
Among other examples of what Lecamus calls learned frenzies, he cites Mademoiselle Antheman who, during her delirium, was of “smiling countenance and agreeable humour. Having lost the use of her right hand through paralysis, she painted and embroidered with her left, with incredible dexterity; and the productions of her mind were no less surprising than those of her hands. She recited verses which showed the greatest possible vivacity and delicacy, though they were the first she had ever composed.”[291]
“I am going to try,” says Gérard de Nerval, in his book entitled Le Rêve et la Vie, “to transcribe the impressions of a long illness which ran its course entirely in the mysteries of my mind. I do not know why I make use of the term illness, for never—as far as I am concerned—did I feel better. Sometimes I thought my strength and activity were doubled; it seemed that I knew and understood everything, imagination gave me infinite delight. In recovering what men called reason, shall I have to regret the loss of this?”
What mental practitioner has not heard similar words over and over again from the mouth of unhappy patients who, after recovering their reason, regretted their past state, that new life, that vita nuova, which Gérard defines as “L’épanchement du songe dans la vie réelle!”
Increase of intellectual activity, says Dr. Parchappe, is frequently met with in insanity; it is even one of the most salient characteristics of this disease in its acute period. The annals of science—adds the same author—contain a certain number of well-authenticated facts, which have contributed to confirm the superstition of a supernatural heightening of the intellectual faculties, and which explain, up to a certain point, how the love of the marvellous, in credulous observers, by exaggerating and distorting analogous facts, has been able to gain credit for the wonderful tales which abound in the history of religious sects at all epochs, and more especially in the history of diabolical possessions in the Middle Ages.[292]
Van Swieten (Comment., 1121) relates that he had seen a woman who, during her attacks of mania, only spoke in verse, which she composed with admirable facility, although in health she had never shown the least poetic talent.