Case CXXX

A clerk in a house of business discovered that the warehouse had been robbed; he fell into a state of deep despair, then exclaimed that he was sought for; he saw the gendarmes surround the house; the scaffold was prepared, the executioner ready to immolate him. It was in vain to attempt to prove to him that all this existed but in his imagination; he could see only the scaffold and the gendarmes. To escape this imaginary death, he committed suicide. This fact, which we noticed at the commencement of our professional career, put us on our guard against this class of diseases; it was well that we did so; for all patients presenting this class of hallucinations, have attempted to destroy themselves.

Case CXXXI

Clergeaud being condemned to death by the assize court of Perigueux, on a charge of poisoning, was seized with a sort of vertigo on his entrance into prison. He recognized no one. An hallucination painted one of the jailers to his mind as the executioner, whom he thought every instant about to put him to death.

Towards evening, Clergeaud became calm, his senses returned and hope re-entered his heart.*

Madness is, more frequently than is believed, the result of remorse. This remark often applies to hallucinations. Semi-ramus saw constantly the pallid countenance of Ninus. The account of the death of Surgeon Manoury presents a positive proof of the fact, besides which it explains the hallucinations of several criminals.

Case CXXXII

Manoury, the enemy of Urbain Grandier, was chosen on the 26th April, 1634, to examine if, as the prioress asserted, some part of his body was insensible. This task he performed with so much barbarity, that one cannot think of the sufferings of the unfortunate victim without shuddering with horror. † He repented of his cruelty; for one night about ten o'clock, as he was returning from a distant part of the town, where he had been to visit a patient, in company with his brother and another man, he suddenly exclaimed, with a start: "Ah! there is Grandier! What do you want with me?" and immediately fell into a trembling and a frenzy, from which they could not recover him. They took him home, raving of Grandier, who seemed to be always before him, and put him to bed with the same trembling and horror. During the four days longer that he survived, his condition did not change. He died, still believing that Grandier was before him, and endeavored to repulse him, whilst he talked in a terrible manner.*

* Gazette des Tribuneux, 2d May, 1844.

† See the admirable episode of the torture of Urbain Grandier, in the Cinq-Mars of M. de Vigny.

Sully reports that the lonely hours of Charles IX. became dreadful by a repetition of the cries and shrieks which he heard during the massacre of St. Bartholomew. "King Charles," says that illustrious minister, "hearing, on the evening of the day and during all the following day, accounts of the slaughter of old men, women, and children, took aside Maitre Amboise Pare, his principal surgeon, whom he much loved, although he was of the new religion, and said to him: 'Amboise, I do not know what has happened to me for the last two or three days, but I am deeply troubled, both in body and mind; I am always in terror; for at all times, whether asleep or awake, I seem to see those murdered bodies, covered with blood, and making hideous faces at me. I wish the old people and children had been spared.' "†

When the mind is oppressed by a great crime, monomania is at hand, and accusing voices frequently terrify the culprit so greatly as to drive him mad. In this manner can be explained the terrors of people in a neighborhood where great massacres have taken place.