asies, the latter alone
made his lunacy discernible, too many individuals being affected with
the other symptom to render it an anomalous feature of the human mind.
My friend was in the habit of protesting that this enormous tooth
increased periodically, and threatened to encroach upon his entire jaw.
Tormented, at the same time, with the desire of regenerating humanity,
he divided his leisure between the study of dentistry, to which he
applied himself in order to impede the progress of his hypothetical
tyrant, and a voluminous correspondence which he kept up with the Pope,
his brother, and the Emperor of the French, his cousin. In the latter
occupation he pleaded the interests of humanity, styled himself 'the
Prince of Thought,' and exalted me to the dignity of his illustrious
friend and benefactor. In the midst of the wreck of his intellect, one
thing still survived--his love of music. He played the violin; and,
strange as it may appear, although insane, he could not understand the
so-called _music of the future_.

"My hut, perched on the verge of the crater, at the very summit of the
mountain, commanded a view of all the surrounding country. The rock
upon which it was built projected over a precipice whose abysses were
concealed by creeping plants, cactus, and bamboos. The species
of table-rock thus formed had been encircled with a railing, and
transformed into a terrace on a level with the sleeping-room, by my
predecessor in this hermitage. His last wish had been to be buried
there; and from my bed I could see his white tombstone gleaming in the
moonlight a few steps from my window. Every evening I rolled my piano
out upon the terrace; and there, facing the most incomparably beautiful
landscape, all bathed in the soft and limpid atmosphere of the tropics,
I poured forth on the instrument, and for myself alone, the thoughts
with which the scene inspired me. And what a scene! Picture to yourself
a gigantic amphitheatre hewn out of the mountains by an army of Titans;
right and left, immense virgin forests full of those subdued and distant
harmonies which are, as it were, the voices of Silence; before me,
a prospect of twenty leagues marvelously enhanced by the extreme
transparency of the air; above, the azure of the sky: beneath, the
creviced sides of the mountain sweeping down to the plain; afar, the
waving savannas; beyond them, a grayish speck (the distant city); and,
encompassing them all, the immensity of the ocea