them as the nearest of kin to a lunatic who had once been tried for
his life. Margrave had then examined the advertisements in the daily
newspapers. One of them, warning the public against a dangerous maniac,
who had effected his escape from an asylum in the west of England,
caught his attention. To that asylum he had repaired.

There he learned that the patient advertised was one whose propensity
was homicide, consigned for life to the asylum on account of a murder,
for which he had been tried. The description of this person exactly
tallied with that of the pretended American. The medical superintendent
of the asylum, hearing all particulars from Margrave, expressed a strong
persuasion that the witness was his missing patient, and had himself
committed the crime of which he had accused another. If so, the
superintendent undertook to coax from him the full confession of all
the circumstances. Like many other madmen, and not least those whose
propensity is to crime, the fugitive maniac was exceedingly cunning,
treacherous, secret, and habituated to trick and stratagem,--more subtle
than even the astute in possession of all their faculties, whether to
achieve his purpose or to conceal it, and fabricate appearances against
another. But while, in ordinary conversation, he seemed rational enough
to those who were not accustomed to study him, he had one hallucination
which, when humoured, led him always, not only to betray himself, but to
glory in any crime proposed or committed. He was under the belief that
he had made a bargain with Satan, who, in return for implicit obedience,
would bear him harmless through all the consequences of such submission,
and finally raise him to great power and authority. It is no unfrequent
illusion of homicidal maniacs to suppose they are under the influence
of the Evil One, or possessed by a Demon. Murderers have assigned as the
only reason they themselves could give for their crime, that "the Devil
got into them," and urged the deed. But the insane have, perhaps, no
attribute more in common than that of superweening self-esteem. The
maniac who has been removed from a garret sticks straws in his hair
and calls them a crown. So much does inordinate arrogance characterize
mental aberration, that, in the course of my own practice, I have
detected, in that infirmity, the certain symptom of insanity, long
before the brain had made its disease manifest even to the most familiar
kindred.

Morbid se