e whole history of his madness.
Some day, perhaps, Louis will come back to the life in which we
vegetate; but if he breathes the air of heaven before the time when we
may be permitted to do so, why should we desire to have him down among
us? I am content to hear his heart beat, and all my happiness is to be
with him. Is he not wholly mine? In three years, twice at intervals he
was himself for a few days; once in Switzerland, where we went, and once
in an island off the wilds of Brittany, where we took some sea-baths. I
have twice been very happy! I can live on memory."

"But do you write down the things he says?" I asked.

"Why should I?" said she.

I was silent; human knowledge was indeed as nothing in this woman's
eyes.

"At those times, when he talked a little," she added, "I think I have
recorded some of his phrases, but I left it off; I did not understand
him then."

I asked her for them by a look; she understood me. This is what I have
been able to preserve from oblivion.

I

Everything here on earth is produced by an ethereal substance
which is the common element of various phenomena, known
inaccurately as electricity, heat, light, the galvanic fluid, the
magnetic fluid, and so forth. The universal distribution of this
substance, under various forms, constitutes what is commonly known
as Matter.

II

The brain is the alembic to which the Animal conveys what each of
its organizations, in proportion to the strength of that vessel,
can absorb of that Substance, which returns it transformed into
Will.

The Will is a fluid inherent in every creature endowed with
motion. Hence the innumerable forms assumed by the Animal, the
results of its combinations with that Substance. The Animal's
instincts are the product of the coercion of the environment in
which it develops. Hence its variety.

III

In Man the Will becomes a power peculiar to him, and exceeding in
intensity that of any other species.

IV

By constant assimilation, the Will depends on the Substance it
meets with again and again in all its transmutations, pervading
them by Thought, which is a product peculiar to the human Will, in
combination with the modifications of that Substance.

V

The innumerable forms ass