"I have met with only one refusal," said Dr. Cabred. "One patient tried calmly to prove to me that life was not worth the labour necessary to preserve it. I must confess that he nearly convinced me, and I often try to find the flaw in his reasoning, though never, as yet, with success. It is a little hard when the apostle of lunatic labour is brought to ask himself if the lunatic who refuses to work is not acting on a better reasoned conviction than his more submissive companions. At any rate, he is the only man in the colony who does nothing. He spends his time reading the paper or dreaming, without saying a word. When I go to see him he mocks at me, declaring that it is I who am the fool, and, indeed, to support his laziness is not, perhaps, the action of a sane man."
There is not a strait-waistcoat or a single appliance for restraint in the whole colony. Excitement or attacks of violence all yield to the bath, which is sometimes prolonged to twenty-four or thirty hours if necessary.
Separate chalets for the manager and his staff, for the water reservoir, the machinery, laundry, dairy, kitchens, workshops, theatre, chapel. Outside, agricultural labour in every form, from ploughing to cattle rearing. Only the superintendents who direct the work are sane, or supposed to be. In spite of this assurance it is not without alarm that one watches madmen handling red-hot irons or tools as dangerous for others as themselves. As may be supposed, they are not put to this kind of work until they have been subjected to long trials.
Our visit to The Open Door lasted a whole day, and still we had not seen everything. From first to last we were followed by a mad photographer, who took his pictures at his own convenience and reprimanded us severely for rising from lunch without first posing for him. Four days later a series of photographs, representing the various incidents of our day at The Open Door, was sent to me, bound in an album—by a madman, of course, and sent by another madman to a person mad enough to believe himself endowed with reason.
Need I add that we had been received to the strains of the Marseillaise and the National Argentine Hymn, performed by a mad band, which, all through lunch, played the music of its repertoire! Ever since, I have wondered why a certificate of madness is not demanded from every candidate for admission to the Opera orchestra.
As for journalism, do you suppose that no room was found for it in The Open Door? The excellent Dr. Cabred is not a man to make such omissions. We were duly presented with a copy of the Ecos de las Mercedes, a monthly paper, written and published by the madmen of The Open Door, with the intention, perhaps, of making us believe that other journals are the work of individuals in full possession of their common-sense—prose and poetry; articles in Spanish, Italian, and French; occasionally a slight carelessness in grammar and in sequence of thought, but, on the whole, not wandering farther from their subject than others.
Finally, to wind up the day's proceedings, we were treated to a horserace ridden by lunatics. Sane beasts mounted by mad horsemen, galloping wildly, by mutual consent, in a useless effort to reach a perfectly vain end. Is not this the common spectacle offered by humanity?
Meantime, one honest madman of mystic tendencies, decorated with about a hundred medals, pursued us with religious works, from which he read us extracts, accompanied by his blessing. I wondered whether this form of exercise was included in Dr. Cabred's programme, since he claims to make his lunatics perform all the acts of a sane community. A similar scruple occurred to me at noon, when I was invited to take a seat at a well-spread table.
"Is your cooking done by madmen?" I inquired, not without anxiety.
"We have made an exception in your favour," was the contrite reply.