lf-esteem accordingly pervaded the dreadful illusion by which
the man I now speak of was possessed. He was proud to be the protected
agent of the Fallen Angel. And if that self-esteem were artfully
appealed to, he would exult superbly in the evil he held himself ordered
to perform, as if a special prerogative, an official rank and privilege;
then, he would be led on to boast gleefully of thoughts which the most
cynical of criminals in whom intelligence was not ruined would shrink
from owning; then, he would reveal himself in all his deformity with as
complacent and frank a self-glorying as some vain good man displays in
parading his amiable sentiments and his beneficent deeds.

"If," said the superintendent, "this be the patient who has escaped from
me, and if his propensity to homicide has been, in some way, directed
towards the person who has been murdered, I shall not be with him a
quarter of an hour before he will inform me how it happened, and detail
the arts he employed in shifting his crime upon another; all will be
told as minutely as a child tells the tale of some school-boy exploit,
in which he counts on your sympathy, and feels sure of your applause."

Margrave brought this gentleman back to L----, took him to the mayor,
who was one of my warmest supporters: the mayor had sufficient influence
to dictate and arrange the rest. The superintendent was introduced to
the room in which the pretended American was lodged. At his own desire
a select number of witnesses were admitted with him. Margrave excused
himself; he said candidly that he was too intimate a friend of mine to
be an impartial listener to aught that concerned me so nearly.

The superintendent proved right in his suspicions, and verified his
promises. My false accuser was his missing patient; the man recognized
Dr. ---- with no apparent terror, rather with an air of condescension,
and in a very few minutes was led to tell his own tale, with a gloating
complacency both at the agency by which he deemed himself exalted, and
at the dexterous cunning with which he had acquitted himself of the
task, that increased the horror of his narrative.

He spoke of the mode of his escape, which was extremely ingenious, but
of which the details, long in themselves, did not interest me, and
I understood them too imperfectly to repeat. He had encountered a
sea-faring traveller on the road, whom he had knocked down with a stone,
and robbed of his glazed hat and pea-jack