"Quite true," said Cyprian, "and although that fanciful book does bear the devil on its forehead, by way of danger-signal--so that those who prefer to give it a wide berth may do so if they choose--I almost wish now I had never brought it into the world. It is quite true that it was suggested to me by my intercourse with the anchorite. I ought to have kept out of his way, perhaps; but you all of you know what a fascination insane people have always had for me. I have always thought that in connection with those abnormal conditions nature vouchsafes us glimpses into her most mysterious depths. In fact, by the very gruesomeness which I have felt in the society of mad people, I have found myself led upon the track of suggestions and ideas which have inspired my mind and fancy to flights of unusual loftiness. Perhaps people who are utterly sane may look upon flights such as these as mere paroxysms of dangerous ill-health. But that is nothing when one knows that one is sound and well."
"There is no doubt, dear Cyprian, that you are as sound and as well as possible," said Theodore, "and in fact all this is a proof of the strength and vigour of your constitution--which I almost could envy you for. You speak of glimpses into Nature's mysterious depths; but people who are not quite sure that they are exempt from anything like giddiness ought to keep away from glimpses of the kind. Of course this could never have applied to your Serapion, as you have described him to us, inasmuch as to associate with him must have been better than companionship with the most brilliant and splendid poet. But you will admit that, chiefly because so many years have passed since you saw him, you have pictured him to tie in all the brilliant colours in which he glows in your memory. Now I consider that, in the society of a man, insane in the particular way in which your Serapion was, I should never have been able to divest myself of an immense uneasiness, nay, I may say terror! Even when you were telling us how he considered his condition to be the happiest conceivable, and wished that it could be yours, I felt my hair beginning to stand on end! What if the notion that this condition was a happy one should take root in one's mind, and eventuate in real madness! Terrible thought! I could never have been much with Serapion, just for that reason. Then, besides the risk to the mind, there was the danger to the body, too. Pinel mentions plenty of cases of people suffering from Fixed Idea who have suddenly become fearfully violent, and murdered everybody whom they came near, like furious wild beasts."
"Theodore is right," said Ottmar. "Cyprian, I blame you for your foolish penchant for folly, your insane interest in insanity. There is a morbidness about it which may give you some trouble one of these days. For my part I shun mad people like the plague; and even people of over-excitable temperaments, which lead them into marked eccentricities of any kind, are repulsive and repugnant to me."
"You go too far," said Theodore, "in your distaste for every expression of feeling which takes any rather peculiar or unusual form. The incongruity which excitable people, as they are called, perceive between their inner selves and the world without them makes them grimace, in a manner which quiet folks, over whom pain has as little power as pleasure, can't understand, and are only annoyed with. Yet you yourself, Ottmar, with all your sensitiveness to this kind of behaviour in others, often lay yourself open to be accused of very distinct eccentricity.
"I happen to remember a man whose eccentricities were so extreme that half his fellow-citizens considered him a lunatic, although no one really less deserved to be so characterized. The way in which I made his acquaintance was as quaintly comic as the circumstances in, which I met with him at a later period were tragic and terrible. I should like to tell you all this story, as a sort of transition from pure insanity, viâ eccentricity, to the realms of every-day rationality. Only I am afraid that, as I should have to say a good deal about music, I should be open to the objection which I made to Cyprian's story--that of giving my own particular hobby undue prominence, and introducing too much of my own personality into my tale. In the meantime, I see that Lothair is casting longing looks at that vase which Cyprian calls 'mysterious,' so we may as well break the spell which binds it."
"Now," said Lothair, when glasses of a fluid which would have merited the encomiums of the fraternity of the "Clucking Hen" had been passed round, "tell us about your eccentric friend--be entertaining, be affecting, be merry, or sad; but get us away from the atmosphere of that abominable mad anchorite, and out of the bedlam where Cyprian has been keeping us immured."
"[The man,]" said Theodore, "whom I am going to tell you about was Krespel, a Member of Council in the town of H----. This Krespel was the most extraordinary character that I have ever, in my lifetime, come across. When I first arrived in H---- the whole town was talking of him, because one of his most extraordinary pranks chanced to be in its fullest swing. He was a very clever lawyer and diplomate, and a certain German prince---not a person of great importance--had employed him to draw up a memorial, concerning claims of his on the Imperial Chancery, which had been eminently successful. As Krespel had often said he never could meet with a house quite to his mind, this prince, as recompense for his services, undertook to pay for the building of a house, to be planned by Krespel according to the dictates of his fancy. He also offered to buy a site for it; but Krespel determined to build it in a delightful piece of garden ground of his own, just outside the town-gate. So he got together all the necessary building materials, and had them laid down in this piece of ground. After which, he was to be seen all day long, in his usual extraordinary costume--which he always made with his own hands, on peculiar principles of his own--slaking the lime, sifting the gravel, arranging the stones in heaps, etc., etc. He had not gone to any architect for a plan. But one fine day he walked in upon the principal builder, and told him to come next morning, to his garden, with the necessary workmen--stonemasons, hodmen, and so forth--and build him a house. The builder, of course, asked to see the plan, and was not a little astonished when Krespel said there was no plan and no occasion for one; every thing would go on all right without one.
"The builder arrived next morning with his men, and found a great rectangular trench, carefully dug in the ground; and Krespel said 'this is the foundation; so set to work, and go on building the walls till I tell you to stop.'
"'But what about the doors and windows,' said the builder; 'are there to be no partition walls?'
"'Just you do as I tell you, my good man,' said Krespel, as calmly as possible; 'everything will come quite right in its own good time.'