“He was an Englishman called Ransome—George Ransome. He was placed here under peculiar circumstances.”
“Corpo di Bacco! I should say they were peculiar, very peculiar circumstances!” exclaimed the doctor. “Do you know, madame, that Mr. Ransome came here as a suspected murderer? He came straight from the gaol at Villefranche, where he had been detained on the suspicion of having killed his wife.”
“There was not one jot of evidence to support such a charge. I know all the circumstances. Surely, sir, you, who must have a wide knowledge of human nature, did not think him guilty?”
“I hardly made up my mind upon that point, even after I had seen him almost every day for six months; but there is one thing I do know about this unhappy gentleman: his lunacy was no assumption, put on to save him from the consequences of a crime. He was a man of noble intellect, large brain-power, and for the time being his reason was totally obscured.”
“To what cause did you attribute the attack?”
“A long period of worry, nerves completely shattered, and finally the shock of that catastrophe on the cliff. Whether his hand pushed her to her death, or the woman flung her life away, the shock was too much for Mr. Ransome’s weakened and worried brain. All the indications of his malady, from the most violent stages to the gradual progress of recovery, pointed to the same conclusion. The history of the case revealed its cause and its earlier phases: an unhappy marriage, a jealous wife, patience and forbearance on his part, until patience degenerated into despair, the dull apathy of a wearied intellect. All that is easy to understand.”
“You pitied him, then, monsieur?”
“Madame, I pity all my patients; but I found in Mr. Ransome a man of exceptional characteristics, and his case interested me deeply.”
“You would not have been interested had you believed him guilty?”
“Pardon me, madame, crime is full of interest for the pathologist. The idea that this gentleman might have spurned his wife from him in a moment of aberration would not have lessened my interest in his mental condition. But although I have never made up my mind upon the question of his guilt or innocence, I am bound to tell you, since you seem even painfully interested in his history, that his conduct after his recovery indicated an open and generous nature, a mind of peculiar refinement, and a great deal of chivalrous feeling. I had many conversations with him during the period of returning reason, and I formed a high opinion of his moral character.”