"Good day—good day, my worthy fellows! I am glad to see you all so well and happy."
Some of the poor lunatics, too far from the doctor to be able to seize his hand, ventured, with a sort of timid hesitation, to offer theirs to the persons who were with him.
"Good morning, friends," said Germain, shaking hands in a manner so cordial as to fill the unfortunate beings with happiness.
"Are these the mad patients?" inquired Madame Georges.
"Nearly the worst belonging to the establishment," answered the doctor, smiling; "they are permitted to be together during the day, but at night they are locked up in the cells you see there."
"Can it be possible that these men are really mad! But when are they violent?"
"Generally at the first outbreak of their malady, when they are brought here. After a short time the soothing treatment they experience, with the society of their companions, calms and amuses them, so that their paroxysms become milder and less frequent, until at length, by the blessing of God, they recover their senses."
"What are those individuals talking so earnestly about?" inquired Madame Georges. "One of them seems referring to a blind man, who, in addition to the loss of sight, seems likewise deprived of speech and reason. Have you such a one among your patients, or is the existence of this person but a mere coinage of the brain?"
"Unhappily, madame, it is a fact but too true, and the history connected with it is a most singular one. The blind man concerning whom you inquire was found in a low haunt in the Champs Elysées, in which a gang of robbers and murderers of the worst description were apprehended; this wretched object was discovered, chained in the midst of an underground cave, and beside him lay stretched the dead body of a woman, so horribly mutilated that it was wholly impossible to attempt to identify it. The man himself was hideously ugly, his features being quite destroyed by the application of vitriol. He has never uttered a single word since he came hither; whether his dumbness be real or affected I know not, for, strange to say, his paroxysms always occur during the night, and when I am absent, so as to baffle all conjecture as to his real situation; but his madness seems occasioned by violent rage, the cause of which we cannot find out, for, as I before observed, he never speaks or utters an articulate sound. But here he is."
The whole of the party accompanying the doctor started with horror at the sight of the Schoolmaster, for he it was, who merely feigned being dumb and mad to procure his own safety. The dead body found beside him was that of the Chouette, whom he had murdered, not during a paroxysm of madness, but while under the influence of such a burning fever of the brain as had produced the fearful dream he had dreamed the night he passed at the farm of Bouqueval.