Shadowland (Mar-Aug 1923)

The Man Who Was Mad By Frederic Boutet Translated from the French by William L. McPherson eight IT is not very agreeable to meet a man who was your friend at college, and who afterward was interned for many months in an asylum — an asylum for highclass pay patients, but a madhouse just the same. Lucien Canalle had the appearance of a man who had perfectly recovered when I met him face to face on the boulevard. Apart from a certain air of sadness and of premature old age (he is thirty-two, I believe), he seemed quite normal, and I tried to treat him as if nothing had happened. We took seats on the terrace of a cafe and I talked gaily of old times at college, where he and his brother had been in the same class with me. "Yon are very polite," he said. "You talk to me as you would to anybody else, dont you? But I know, you see. I am the man who was mad. With you, as with the others, and as long as I live, I shall be an object of suspicion. They keep watch on me without seeming to do so. They are too free and easy, too gay, too amiable. They agree with me too pointedly. I am the man who was mad. "But, no, I am not mad! I have never been mad! I want, for once, to tell the whole truth. But the truth now is no longer of any importance. A wrong has been done to me and another has benefited from it. I was not the madman. It was my brother Louis. No, I beg of you, let me tell you the whole story before you assume that I have not been cured. "Louis went mad seven years ago. He was twentyand I was twenty-six. He was not mad all the time. He had periodical attacks. He undressed himself, he thought that he was surrounded by enemies, he argued with pieces of furniture and fought with them. We come of stock somewhat abnormal mentally, and Louis, besides, overdid things between his eighteenth and twenty-fifth year. He studied mathematics too hard and dissipated too much. The two things dont go together. "When this derangement began, we were in the country, at the family chateau. You know that our parents died long ago. I was alone there with Louis. He grew worse and worse. The attacks became more frequent and more violent. The rest of the time, however, he had no trouble. And he had no memory whatever of the crises after they were over. He was a good fellow, as always, cheerful and perfectly content with life. "I persuaded him to return to Paris. I had already consulted Prunier. You remember him, dont you? He was also at college with us, and he remained— he had remained, I should say — my best friend. He had just taken his degree in medicine. He was a pupil of Cave, the celebrated alienist, and I could not have found a better man to consult. "He knew Louis well. He examined him carefully without letting him notice it, without putting him in the least on his guard, treating him like an old friend. He told me finally that it was a serious case, though curable. With care, rest, fresh air and hydrotherapy he could recover in less than a year, but only on condition that he be put in charge of Cave, who had a sanitarium in the suburbs. Everything at Cave's is up-to-date. You can well believe me, for I was there myself. "I hesitated. It seemed horrible to me. As I just told you, between attacks he was relatively rational. He attended to his affairs and pursued his studies in physics, directing the latter, moreover, toward fantastic problems and scientific extravagances, impossible of realization. But for the most part he lived like everybody else, and lived even at too rapid a, pace, for he went out every evening and indulged in all sorts of excesses. I was obliged to accompany him on these expeditions and God knows if that was not a torment to me, for I was a serious-minded person. But I hardly dared to let him go alone. "Besides, nobody else suspected anything. In the house in which we had our apartment, in the Avenue Villiers, the other tenants found him more sociable than they found me. Pie never had any attacks outside and I did my best to conceal them from the servants, locking myself up with him and trying to quiet and stifle his cries. "But that state of things could not last. He became more violent than ever. Prunier was annoyed and told me that I was to blame. He said that Louis was in danger, that he was aggravating his condition every day by the life which he led and that it was necessary to confine him without delay, if we wished to avoid a catastrophe and a public scandal. "Prunier also told me that he was going to America to study asylum methods there, and that he wanted to set his mind at ease about the two of us before he started. Finally, he insisted peremptorily that something should be done. "And then, in addition, 1 wanted to get married. I was very much in love and I feared the results of some eccentricity or worse on Louis' part. He also knew the girl I loved — Yvonne Martier." "Yvonne Martier?" I said in astonishment. 'But she married. ..." "Yes, she married my brother," Lucien Canalle interrupted. (Continued on page 74) Page Thirty-Five