in low and
solemn voices in another room. One, the cleverest and most celebrated
among them, took me aside, and bidding me prepare for the worst, told
me--me, the madman!--that my wife was mad. He stood close beside me at
an open window, his eyes looking in my face, and his hand laid upon my
arm. With one effort, I could have hurled him into the street beneath.
It would have been rare sport to have done it; but my secret was at
stake, and I let him go. A few days after, they told me I must place her
under some restraint: I must provide a keeper for her. I! I went into
the open fields where none could hear me, and laughed till the air
resounded with my shouts!

'She died next day. The white-headed old man followed her to the grave,
and the proud brothers dropped a tear over the insensible corpse of her
whose sufferings they had regarded in her lifetime with muscles of iron.
All this was food for my secret mirth, and I laughed behind the white
handkerchief which I held up to my face, as we rode home, till the tears
Came into my eyes.

'But though I had carried my object and killed her, I was restless and
disturbed, and I felt that before long my secret must be known. I could
not hide the wild mirth and joy which boiled within me, and made me
when I was alone, at home, jump up and beat my hands together, and
dance round and round, and roar aloud. When I went out, and saw the
busy crowds hurrying about the streets; or to the theatre, and heard the
sound of music, and beheld the people dancing, I felt such glee, that
I could have rushed among them, and torn them to pieces limb from limb,
and howled in transport. But I ground my teeth, and struck my feet upon
the floor, and drove my sharp nails into my hands. I kept it down; and
no one knew I was a madman yet.

'I remember--though it's one of the last things I can remember: for now
I mix up realities with my dreams, and having so much to do, and being
always hurried here, have no time to separate the two, from some strange
confusion in which they get involved--I remember how I let it out at
last. Ha! ha! I think I see their frightened looks now, and feel the
ease with which I flung them from me, and dashed my clenched fist into
their white faces, and then flew like the wind, and left them screaming
and shouting far behind. The strength of a giant comes upon me when
I think of it. There--see how this iron bar bends beneath my furious
wrench. I could snap it like a twig, on