“Nothing of the kind,” returned the lady; “only that James Woodruff has been talking again in such an extraordinary manner, that I feel quite faint even now with it. Do reach me that bottle, dear. Really, Rowel, I tell you again, that if he cannot be set at liberty very soon, I shall be compelled to keep out of the way altogether. I will confine myself to this end of the house, and never go within reach of him any more. What a horrible creature he is!”
“He has not injured you, has he?” the doctor again inquired, as he involuntarily run his fore-finger round the inner front of his neckerchief.
“Of course not—how could he? But then that long hair gives him such a frightful look, and at the same time, whenever he can catch a glimpse of me, he always begs and prays me to prevail on you to set him free. I am sure I wonder you keep him, even for my sake; and, besides that, the man seems sensible enough, and always has been, if I am to judge by his conversation.”
“Ah!—what—again?” exclaimed her husband, interrupting her. “How many more times shall I have to repeat to you, that a madman, when under restraint, cannot, in some particular cases, be in the most remote degree depended upon, though his observations be apparently as intelligent and sane as yours or mine?”
“I remember you have said so,” remarked Mrs. Rowel; “but it seems very singular.”
“It may appear very singular in your opinion, my dear, because you are not expected to possess the same erudition and extensive knowledge that a professional man does in these things; though, with deference, my dear, common experience and observation might by this time have convinced you that my theory is perfectly correct. With these unhappy people you should believe neither your eyes nor your ears; for if you do, it is a hundred to one but that some of them, at one time or another, will persuade you that they are perfectly sane and well, when, were they to be freed from restrain, they would tear you in pieces the very next instant.”
Mrs. Rowel looked somewhat disconcerted, and at a loss to meet her husband in a region so scientific that neither seeing nor hearing were of any use; though secretly she could not but wonder, if neither eyes nor ears were to be trusted, by what superior faculty, what divining-rod of intellect, a patient's madness was to be ascertained. Her doubts were not wholly overturned by the ploughshare of the doctor's logic, and therefore she very naturally, though with considerable show of diffidence, stuck pertinaciously to her old opinion.
Her husband felt vexed,—and especially as he wished to impose upon her understanding,—that with all his powers of speech, and his assumption of profound knowledge, he could not now, any more than hitherto, succeed in converting her to the faith which he himself pretended so devoutly to hold, that lunatics sometimes could not be known by their conversation, and that the individual James Woodruff, in particular, who was the subject of their conversation, was actually as mad as a March hare, notwithstanding the actions and appearances, undeviating and regular, which in his case so obstinately forced upon Mrs. Rowel the private conviction that he was quite as sound in intellect as any other subject within the King's dominions. Nevertheless the doctor stifled the feelings of petulant resentment which were rising in his bosom, and satisfied himself simply by assuring his good, though somewhat perverse lady, that it was no very unusual thing for a certain description of lunatics to maintain their own sanity by arguments which, in any other case, would be considered very excellent; though, with experienced professional men, that very fact went farther in support of their derangement than almost any other that could be brought to bear.
“Whenever,” continued the doctor, with some degree of warmth, “whenever I meet with a patient,—never mind whether he is under medical treatment or not,—a patient who endeavours by argument and proof to show me that he is compos mentis,—who seeks for evidence, as it were, in his own mind to substantiate the sanity of that very mind,—that is, a man who appeals for proof to the very thing to be itself proved,—who tests the mind by the mind,—when I meet with a patient of that description, it seems to imply a kind of doubt and distrust of his own intellect, and I set him down, in spite of what anybody can say to the contrary, as non compos mentis, and a proper subject on whom to issue a writ ideota inquirendo vel examinando.”
“I cannot argue with you like that, Frank,” observed the doctor's wife; “but do you mean to say that a man cannot himself tell whether he is mad,—and that nobody else, by what they see and hear, can tell either?”