"Well, anyhow he's a monomaniac. Folly itself is a complicated psychological mystery, a tree of which monomania is the stoutest branch."
"Well, he had the monomania of brigandage, an hereditary monomania. He is a primitive sort of person, and by becoming a monk he tried to free himself from his monomania. He went from bad to worse. He'll end by going mad. A normal intelligent man, if he has the ill luck to become the victim of a fixed idea, throws it off by giving way to it. Take love, for instance. That's a fixed idea, if you like! a continual itch to be near some particular person—alone with her. There's no remedy for that state of obsession but to get near—the fixed idea! Wait a moment, I see something I want" (he stopped before a shop window)—"a crocodile card-case."
"Perhaps you are right."
"Of course I am. I know it's crocodile."
"I mean about the fixed idea——"
"Just think! that card-case was once living in the Nile."
"What an idiot you are! where's the Police Office?" asked Anania, turning on his heel.
"How do I know? I've never been taken up."
"Seriously, where is it?"
"Do you think you're at Nuoro? There are dozens of offices. I've noticed one at San Martino dei Monti."