Valduna
VALDUNA was a surfeit of idiots. Mr. R. waxed grave; he has gained, I think, a definite acquisition of humanity. That is as it should be. Such sights of anguish are a tonic for the soul; they make us serious about things that are worth being serious about; they deepen and broaden our sympathies.
The cheery doctor became still more cheery on hearing my name—he is a local alpinist—and did not omit a single patient save one or two of the women who, presumably, were taking sun-baths in impuris naturalibus, as was also one of the males, a robust and pretty boy of sixteen; he had a clouded, far-away look, and could not be induced to utter a word. We saw them all; the unclean patients, the unquiet patients, as well as the simple lunatics, sad or glad. There are no violent ones here just now, but some of those who suffered from hallucinations of hearing were sufficiently abusive.
“Hello, Madam,” said the doctor to one of the ladies, “what may you be doing here? I don’t seem to have seen your face before.”
“I’ve come to visit a poor patient. Didn’t they announce my name? How unpardonably stupid of them! But I shall have to be leaving in about half an hour. So good-by, doctor, in case we don’t meet again.”
Quite mad!
There was a poor old fellow in bed, on the brink of G. P. I. He fascinated Mr. R., casting a hot, delirious glance upon him and pouring out a flood of turbid megalomania.
“What is he telling me? What? What’s that? Translate, translate!”
Translating was out of the question. The speech contained not a shred of coherence; nothing but fragmentary pictures, flashing up and swiftly engulfed again; his brain was in combustion. Moreover, the patient would have had ten words out of his mouth to every one of mine.
We visited the other establishment as well, a non-official, charitable one. The director is a priest, native of this province, and one who knows it well. He told me an interesting thing. We were speaking of the former wine-production here, and I said it was doubtless the Arlberg tunnel (I went through with the first train) which had caused the local plantation of vineyards to cease, or at least to diminish to such an extent that, for example, of the vineyards once clothing the hillsides of my particular village—our family, too, had its own—there was only a single one left; that belonging to the Prior of St. Gerold. And it was the same with the rest of the province; the reason being, of course, that the Arlberg railway had immensely reduced the price of wine from Lower Austria or South Tyrol, which used formerly to be imported by carrier, at great expense, over the Arlberg pass. Why cultivate bad wine, when you can buy a better quality for the same money?