"Oh, what importance he attaches to so trifling a thing!" thought I; "but, after all, the man is right; I had better attend to the most essential, nor was I wise to couple two requests together."
"Signor Marquis," said I, "have you any cure for insanity?"
"I cured your father," was the answer, "and this your mother knows. He in return did me a service; he presented me with—this excellent cloak."
I was more puzzled than ever; I had never before heard that my poor father had unsettled reason, but many circumstances made me now believe it. I fancied too that my youngest sister gave indications of the same disorder; she was growing melancholy and reserved. "Oh, heavens!" thought I, "there will be more work for this man to do; I had better invite him at once to England, and make him physician in ordinary to our family."
"I have an engagement at nine," said the stranger; "have you any other inquiries to make?"
"But, if you cured my father, Signor Marquis," I observed, "how is it that I have inherited the disease? Should not the cure have eradicated it for ever from him and his posterity?"
"Is it not enough that I prevented the display of such a malady during his life? that I drove away the cloud that obscured his day, so that the sun of reason shone brightly on him until his death? What had I to do with future generations? with a race of men then unborn? I performed my contract, and he was satisfied. Shall the son be more difficult to please than the father?"
I interrupted him, "Oh, mysterious man! canst thou not cure the root of this disease? stop its fatal progress? prevent the seed from partaking of the nature of the plant?"
"Young man!" solemnly returned the marquis, "was not thy first progenitor, the man who resided in Paradise, mad—essentially mad? and has not his disease been carried on, in spite of all physicians, down, down to the present hour? It is woven into man's very nature; the warp and woof of which he is composed. I can check its open manifestation in a single individual; but the evil will only be dammed up during his time, to give it an increased impetus and power to those who follow him. Art thou not an instance of this fact? Hast thou not been madder than thy father?"
I groaned aloud. I remembered my own wild delusions, my sudden bursts of passion. I even began to think that madness ruled me at that very hour; that all I saw and heard was the coinage of a distempered brain.