foul deed imputed
to me. That motive had been first suggested by Mr. Vigors. Cases are
on record of men whose life had been previously blameless, who have
committed a crime which seemed to belie their nature, in the monomania
of some intense desire. In Spain, a scholar reputed of austere
morals murdered and robbed a traveller for money in order to purchase
books,--books written, too, by Fathers of his Church! He was intent on
solving some problem of theological casuistry. In France, an antiquary,
esteemed not more for his learning than for amiable and gentle
qualities, murdered his most intimate friend for the possession of
a medal, without which his own collection was incomplete. These, and
similar anecdotes, tending to prove how fatally any vehement desire,
morbidly cherished, may suspend the normal operations of reason and
conscience, were whispered about by Dr. Lloyd's vindictive partisan;
and the inference drawn from them and applied to the assumptions against
myself was the more credulously received, because of that over-refining
speculation on motive and act which the shallow accept, in their
eagerness to show how readily they understand the profound.

I was known to be fond of scientific, especially of chemical
experiments; to be eager in testing the truth of any novel invention.
Strahan, catching hold of the magistrate's fantastic hypothesis, went
about repeating anecdotes of the absorbing passion for analysis and
discovery which had characterized me in youth as a medical student, and
to which, indeed, I owed the precocious reputation I had obtained.

Sir Philip Derval, according not only to report, but to the direct
testimony of his servant, had acquired in the course of his travels many
secrets in natural science, especially as connected with the healing
art,--his servant had deposed to the remarkable cures he had effected
by the medicinals stored in the stolen casket. Doubtless Sir Philip,
in boasting of these medicinals in the course of our conversation,
had excited my curiosity, inflamed my imagination; and thus when I
afterwards suddenly met him in a lone spot, a passionate impulse had
acted on a brain heated into madness by curiosity and covetous desire.

All these suppositions, reduced into system, were corroborated by
Strahan's charge that I had made away with the manuscript supposed to
contain the explanations of the medical agencies employed by Sir Philip,
and had sought to shelter my theft by a t