perceiving the failure of her
attempt, took care to hide herself, and never appeared again.

Six months did Thomas remain confined to his bed; and during that time
he not only became reduced to a skeleton, but seemed also to have lost
the use of his faculties. Every remedy that could be thought of was
tried in his behalf; but although the physicians succeeded in curing the
physical malady, they could not remove that of the mind; so that when he
was at last pronounced cured, he was still afflicted with the strangest
madness that was ever heard of among the many kinds by which humanity
has been assailed. The unhappy man imagined that he was entirely made of
glass; and, possessed with this idea, when any one approached him he
would utter the most terrible outcries, begging and beseeching them not
to come near him, or they would assuredly break him to pieces, as he was
not like other men but entirely of glass from head to foot.

In the hope of rousing him from this strange hallucination, many
persons, without regard to his prayers and cries, threw themselves upon
him and embraced him, bidding him observe that he was not broken for all
that. But all they gained by this was to see the poor creature sink to
the earth, uttering lamentable moans, and instantly fall into a fainting
fit, from which he could not be recovered for several hours; nay, when
he did recover, it was but to renew his complaints, from which he never
desisted but to implore that such a misfortune might not be suffered to
happen again.

He exhorted every one to speak to him from a great distance; declaring
that on this condition they might ask him what they pleased, and that he
could reply with all the more effect, now he was a man of glass and not
of flesh and bones, since glass, being a substance of more delicate
subtlety, permits the soul to act with more promptitude and efficacy
than it can be expected to do in the heavier body formed of mere earth.

Certain persons then desiring to ascertain if what he had said were
true, asked him many questions of great difficulty respecting various
circumstances; to all these he replied with the utmost acuteness,
insomuch that his answers awakened astonishment in the most learned
professors of medicine and philosophy whom that university could boast.
And well they might be amazed at seeing a man who was subject to so
strange an hallucination as that of believing himself to be made of
glass, still retain such extrao