e famous novel of Le Sage. You remember,
doubtless, the disease of which the Duke d'Olivarez is there stated to
have died?"--"Of the idea," answered the medical gentleman, "that he was
haunted by an apparition, to the actual existence of which he gave no
credit, but died, nevertheless, because he was overcome and heart-broken
by its imaginary presence."--"I, my dearest doctor," said the sick man,
"am in that very case; and so painful and abhorrent is the presence of
the persecuting vision, that my reason is totally inadequate to combat
the effects of my morbid imagination, and I am sensible I am dying, a
wasted victim to an imaginary disease." The medical gentleman listened
with anxiety to his patient's statement, and for the present judiciously
avoiding any contradiction of the sick man's preconceived fancy,
contented himself with more minute inquiry into the nature of the
apparition with which he conceived himself haunted, and into the history
of the mode by which so singular a disease had made itself master of his
imagination, secured, as it seemed, by strong powers of the
understanding, against an attack so irregular. The sick person replied
by stating that its advances were gradual, and at first not of a
terrible or even disagreeable character. To illustrate this, he gave the
following account of the progress of his disease:--

"My visions," he said, "commenced two or three years since, when I found
myself from time to time embarrassed by the presence of a large cat,
which came and disappeared I could not exactly tell how, till the truth
was finally forced upon me, and I was compelled to regard it as no
domestic household cat, but as a bubble of the elements, which had no
existence save in my deranged visual organs or depraved imagination.
Still I had not that positive objection to the animal entertained by a
late gallant Highland chieftain, who has been seen to change to all the
colours of his own plaid if a cat by accident happened to be in the room
with him, even though he did not see it. On the contrary, I am rather a
friend to cats, and endured with so much equanimity the presence of my
imaginary attendant, that it had become almost indifferent to me; when,
within the course of a few months, it gave place to, or was succeeded
by, a spectre of a more important sort, or which at least had a more
imposing appearance. This was no other than the apparition of a
gentleman-usher, dressed as if to wait upon a Lord Lieu