Chapter IV (3)

It is said that, when he reached Guadalupe, he had a vision which exercised a decisive influence on him. The Virgin appeared to him, and gave him the Child Jesus, naked, with clothes to cover him. This was to show him that he ought to have pity on the weak, shelter the destitute, and clothe the poor--at least such was his interpretation. His mission dates from that day, and he executed it with so much the more zeal, as he believed it to have been laid upon him by the Virgin whom he adored.

Dressed in a white garment, which an Hieronymite monk had given him, with a wallet on his back, and a pilgrim’s staff in his hand, he returned to Oropesa, and went to lodge in the poor-house.

The misery of the inmates so touched him, that he went outside the city, begged alms for them, and gave them all that he received. Later on, he took to selling faggots in the public square, gave to the poor and sick all that he gained, and slept in stables, through the charity of their owners.

One day, having seen a notice posted up in the square, “House to let for the poor,” he conceived the idea of making it into an asylum. Having begged money from the rich, with which he bought mats, blankets, and utensils, he received and sheltered forty-six sick and crippled paupers. In order to maintain them, he went about the streets at the dinner hour, to collect from the rich the remnants of their meals, crying, “Do good, my brethren; it will return in blessing to yourselves.”

Juan de Dios’ example provoked emulation; several men offered themselves to help him. He instructed them in their new duties, and thus became the head of a group, which, by multiplying, has become the great congregation now in existence.

The resources now put at his disposal permitted him to treat the sick, “as is fitting.”

It is worthy of attention that Juan de Dios was a reformer in the manner of treating the sick, only placing one patient in each bed. He was the first to divide the sick into classes--he was, in short, the creator of the modern hospital, and the founder of casual wards; for he opened, in connection with his hospital, a house where the homeless poor and travellers without money could sleep.

It was at this period that he took the name of Juan de Dios. The good done by him did not remain unknown, and the name of Juan de Dios, father of the poor, was spread abroad through Spain. Profiting by this, he made a journey as far as Granada, and returned with abundant contributions.

He was exhausted by hard work and exposure rather than by years. He treated himself with exaggerated austerity--always travelling on foot without shoes, hat, or linen--only covered with a single grey garment; he fasted with extreme frequency, and imposed on himself the most trying exertions. He would rush through a burning house to save the sick, he often threw himself into the water to save children; he may be said to have died of the hardships he endured.

During his last days, he sent for Antonio Martin, his earliest disciple, and recommended the work to his care. Feeling the approach of death, he left his bed to pray, and died on his knees.

He was born on March 8, 1495, and died on Saturday, March 8, 1550.

He had a splendid funeral; sick men touched the bier in the hope of being healed; the sheet which covered the corpse was torn to pieces, and each rag became a relic. He was canonised on September 21, 1630, by Urban VIII., and is now known as San Juan de Dios.[419]

_Prosper Enfantin._--Prosper Enfantin, though an engineer, a railway director, and otherwise connected with such rational and prosaic subjects as mathematics, nevertheless, in 1850, believed himself to be, and in fact was, the head of a new religion, a variation of that of Saint Simon. He had a handsome face and large forehead of an Olympian cast; he was very kind-hearted, but profoundly convinced of his own infallibility on all subjects--on industrial and philosophical questions--on painting as well as on cooking. He had what, in the peculiar language of monomaniacs, he called _circumferential_ ideas, in which every new fact found, in its pre-established place, the proper solution. The new religion was to equalize men and women, and to make the language of finance and industry poetical. He himself represented the Father, and was always hoping to find the Mother, the free woman, the Eve,--a woman, reasoning like man, who, knowing the needs and capabilities of women, would make the confession of her sex without restriction, so as to furnish the elements for a declaration of the rights and duties of women. But the right woman was never found, for Madame de Staël and George Sand, to whom he and his friends first turned, laughed at them; they sought her in the East, at Constantinople, and found, instead, a prison! But for all that, he never lost his illusion. He used to say that only great men could found a new religion.

His goodness was exquisite; he constantly sacrificed himself for his followers--his sons, as he called them. These wore at one time, like certain monomaniacs, a symbolical uniform--white trousers to represent _love_, red waist-coat for _work_, and blue coat for _faith_. This signified that his religion was founded on love, strengthened the heart with work, and was wholly encompassed by faith. Every one was to have his name written on his shirt-front, and to wear, in addition, a collar adorned with triangles, and a semi-circle which was to become a circle as soon as the Mother, the Eve aforesaid, had been found.

These are the symbols usual with the monomaniac and the mattoid.

This is seen in their programmes, in which they announced--in type of various sizes--that: “Man recalls the Past, Woman represents the Future,--the two united see the present.” Yet, in spite of all this, he foresaw--and even tried to undertake--the Suez Canal, and counted among his followers such men as Chevalier, Lambert, and Jourdan.[420]

_Lazzaretti._--An example the more curious as well as authentic, as it has manifested itself in recent years, under the eyes of all, and has arrived at the dignity of an historic event, is the case of David Lazzaretti.[421]

This man was born at Arcidosso, in 1834. His father, a carter, appears to have been given to drink, but was of great strength. He had some relatives who were suicidal, and others insane; one, in particular, died a religious maniac, and believed himself to be the Eternal Father. Lazzaretti’s six brothers were all strong men, of gigantic stature, ranging from 1·90 to 1·95 m. in height (which, however, is not uncommon in that part of the country), of quick wits and tenacious memory.

David was distinguished from the rest by his superior stature, by the distinction and regularity of his features, by greater intelligence, by the large size of his head, which was dolichocephalic in form, and by his eyes, which some found fascinating, though to many (says the advocate Pugno) they seemed to have the character of possession and of insanity. It is asserted that he was hypospadic and perhaps impotent in his youth--anomalies of no slight importance, if we remember that Morel and, especially, Legrand du Saulle[422] have often discovered them in hereditary madmen.

Even from his childhood, he showed those contradictions, those tendencies to extremes in character, which are frequent precursors of insanity. Thus, when a boy he wished to become a monk; later on, after he had taken to his father’s trade, he began to lead an irregular life, and gave himself up to alcoholic intemperance. In the meantime, however, he cultivated his mind by a course of reading which was singular for a man in his position, including Dante and Tasso; and at fifteen he was called “Thousand Ideas” from the strange songs he invented,[423] though he could never succeed in learning the rules of grammar. He was quarrelsome, used the foulest language, and was dreaded by all, so much so that, one day, on the occasion of a festival, unarmed and followed only by his brothers, he put to flight the entire population of Castel del Piano. Yet he was easily excited by a speech, a poem, a sermon, a play--anything that appeared noble and great. He had an extreme veneration for Christ and Mahomet, whom he used to call the two greatest men that had ever appeared in the world.

According to his own confessions, he had, at the age of fourteen, various hallucinations of the same kind as those which proved so fatal to him in 1878. It is certain, besides, that, at one time in his youth, he had a strong sympathy for a Jewess of Pittigliano, awakened by the eloquence with which she defended her religion. Yet at that time he was accustomed to say that there were three things he abhorred--women, churches, and dancing.

In 1859, at twenty-five, he enlisted as a volunteer in the cavalry; and in 1860, he took part in Cialdini’s campaign, but rather as an officer’s servant than as a soldier. Before starting, he wrote a patriotic hymn, which was sent to Brofferio, and surprised him by the novelty of its thoughts and the beauty of some of the verses, contrasting strangely with the roughness of the phraseology, and the numerous grammatical errors.

After this, he again returned to his trade as a carter, and at the same time to his habits of debauchery and foul language. He also rejoined his wife, whom he had married three years previously, and for whom he felt a poetic affection which he carried so far as to write love-songs to her. Here, again, his ambitious ideas reappeared, and induced him anew, though so uncultivated, to seek fame through his verses and tragedies, which read like burlesques.

Gradually, his fantastic delusions took another direction. In 1867, at thirty-three, he had--whether as an effect of drink, or of political excitement--a return of the religious hallucinations of 1848, in a more marked form than previously. One day he disappeared, in consequence of a vision of the Madonna, who had commanded him to go to Rome, and remind the Pope (who at first refused to receive him, but afterwards treated him with courtesy, though, it is said, not without advising him to try the remedy of a good shower-bath) of his divine mission. He then went to the hermitage of Montorio Romano, in the Sabine mountains, inhabited by a Prussian monk named Ignazio Micus. The latter kept him with him for three months in the “Grotto of the Blessed Amadeus,” directing him in his theological studies.

It is very probable--though on this point we can only conjecture, as all direct evidence is wanting--that this monk assisted him to make the tattoo-marks on his forehead, which he claimed to have received from the hand of St. Peter, and which he hid under a lock of hair from the gaze of the profane, showing them only to true believers.

This tattooing, according to the testimony of medical men, consists of an irregular parallelogram, on the upper side of which are thirteen dots, disposed in the form of a cross. To this mark, and to two others which he afterwards produced on himself, on the deltoid muscle and the inside of the leg, he attributed--through a tendency common among the insane--a strange and mysterious significance, as seals of a special covenant with God.

. . | . | |. . . . . . . | | . | | . | | . | |______________|]

From that moment a complete change took place in him, such as is often observed in the insane.[424] From being quarrelsome, blasphemous, and intemperate, he became tractable, gentle, and abstemious to the point of living on bread and water in Sabina, and, in the _tempora_ on the mountains, on herbs with salt and vinegar. At other times he had no other food but polenta, or _soupe-maigre_, or bread with onions or garlic. On the island of Monte Cristo, in 1870, he lived for over a month on six loaves, garnished with a few herbs;[425] and in the French monastery, he got through several days on two potatoes a day. What must have appeared still more strange, and surprised even cultured minds, was the fact that the chaotic and burlesque writer became sometimes elegant, always effective--full of vigorous images supplied by a piety comparable alone to that of the early Christians.

This, in fact, struck the clergy of the district, who, rightly seeing in him a repetition of the ancient prophets, took him seriously, all the more that, according to their usual custom, they perceived the means of making a profit out of him and getting a church rebuilt.

The people, already justly astonished at his changed ways of life, no less than by his tattooings, his inspired speech, his long neglected beard and grave bearing, rushed in masses to hear him, encouraged by the priests.

A procession was then organized, in which Lazzaretti, accompanied by priests and by some of the most influential among the laity, marched to Arcidosso, Roccalbegna, Castel del Piano, Pian Castagnaio, Cinigiano, and Santafiora. In all these places he was received with rejoicings by the people on their knees; and the parish priests kissed his face and his hands and even his feet. The construction of the church was begun, and contributions to the building fund flowed in abundantly. But though numerous, the amounts were small, the mountaineers being unable to give much. The notion was then suggested of employing the labour of their arms.

The site of the church had been selected not far from Arcidosso--about a hundred paces from the village, at the spot called _La Croce dei Canzacchi_, where, by a strange fatality, he was to receive his death-shot.

The faithful assembled by thousands to begin the building. Men, women and children were employed in carrying fascines, beams of wood, and stones. But, unfortunately, architecture, like grammar, has rules; and in carrying them out prophetic inspiration is of little use without training. Thus, as Lazzaretti’s verses remained lame, so the materials collected with so much labour remained a useless heap, like the tower which was to reach to heaven, and never became more than a pile of stones.

In January, 1870, he founded the “Society of the Holy League,” a mutual assistance society which he called the symbol of charity. In March of the same year, after having assembled his followers at a Last Supper, he set out, accompanied by Raffaello and Giuseppe Vichi, for the island of Monte Cristo, where he remained for some months, writing epistles, prophecies, and sermons. He then returned to Montelabro, where he wrote down the visions or prophetic inspirations which he had, and where he was arrested for sedition (April 27th). After his liberation,[426] he founded a society to which he gave the name of “Christian Families.” This was considered, very erroneously, as a proof of continued fraud; and he was arrested, but discharged, through the efforts of the advocate Salvi, after seven months’ imprisonment.

In 1873, Lazzaretti, in obedience to other divine commands, started on a journey, passing through Rome, Naples, and Turin, whence he proceeded to the Chartreuse at Grenoble. Here he wrote the Rules and Discipline of the Order of Penitent Hermits, invented a system of cipher, with a numerical alphabet, and dictated the “Book of the Heavenly Flowers,” in which it is written that “The great man shall descend from the mountains, followed by a little band of mountain burghers.” To which are added the visions, dreams, and divine commands which he believed himself to have received in that place.

On his return to Montelabro he found an immense crowd, attracted both by devotion and curiosity, encamped on the summit of the mountain, to whom he addressed a sermon on the text, “God sees us, judges us, condemns us.” For this he was denounced to the authorities as tending to overthrow the government and promote civil war.

In the night of Nov. 19, 1874, he was arrested a second time, and brought before the court at Rieti. This time the authorities were desirous of obtaining the opinion of non-specialist experts, who, with inexplicable want of perception, pronounced him to be of sound mind and a cunning knave.[427] Thus, in spite of his strange publications and his tattoo marks, he was condemned to fifteen months’ imprisonment, and one year of police supervision, for fraud and vagabondage.

The sentence, however, was referred to the Court of Appeal at Perugia; and on the 2nd of August, 1875, he was allowed to return to Montelabro, where he reconstituted his society, and placed the priest Imperiuzzi at the head of it. His health had suffered in prison, and for this reason--perhaps, also, to avoid new arrests, and to enjoy the glory of easy martyrdom among the Legitimist fanatics--he went to France in October. Being mysteriously carried, as he expresses it, by the Divine power, into the environs of a town in Burgundy, he produced a book, which with good reason he calls “mysterious,” entitled “My Wrestling with God,” or “The Book of the Seven Seals, with the description and nature of the Seven Eternal Cities”--a mixture of Genesis and Revelation, with sentences and rhapsodies entirely of an insane character. He also wrote a manifesto addressed to all the princes of Christendom, in which he calls himself the great Monarch, and invites them to make alliance with him, for, “at an unexpected time the end of the world shall be manifested to the Latin nation in a way quite opposed to human pride.” In the same document he declares himself Leader, Master, Judge, and Prince over all the potentates of earth. These writings were copied for him by the priest Imperiuzzi, who corrected the most conspicuous mistakes; and many of them attained not only the undeserved honour of appearing in print, but also that of being translated into French, by the aid of M. Léon du Vachat, and various Italian and foreign reactionaries, who had taken Lazzaretti seriously.

However, a short time after, he was so far carried away by delirium as to begin inveighing against the corruptions of the priesthood and the practice of auricular confession, for which he wished to substitute a public one. Thereupon the Holy See declared his doctrines false and his writings subversive, and the same man who had formerly written a work[428] in favour of the Pope, now wrote, and despatched on May 14, 1878, an exhortation addressed to his brethren of the Order of Hermits, against Papal idolatry, and the beast of the seven heads. After all this, with the usual contradictoriness of the insane, he went to Rome to lay aside his symbolic seal and his rod, and retracted before the Holy Office; yet, afterwards, returning to Montelabro, he continued to deliver addresses against the Catholic Church, which, he said, had become a shopkeeping church, and against the _priests, true atheists in practice, who, not believing themselves, profit by the belief of others_. Preaching the Holy Reformation, and declaring himself the Man of Mystery, the New Christ, Leader and Avenger, he exhorted believers to separate themselves from the world, and prove their separation by abstaining from food and from sexual intercourse, even in the case of married persons, who, however, if they indulged, were required to pray for at least two hours, naked, outside their bed, before the act. He issued paper money for considerable sums, in proportion to the means at the disposal of the community, _i.e._, up to 104,000 francs; but it should be noted that this was absolutely useless, being kept shut up in a closed vase. This idea savours unmistakably of insanity.

After announcing a great miracle, he caused to be prepared, with a part of the money collected, banners and garments for the members, embroidered with the animals which had appeared to him in his hallucinations--all of strange and grotesque shapes. He had a richer one made for himself, and, for the rank and file, a square piece of stuff to wear on the breast, which showed a cross, with two C’s reversed, ↄ † C, the usual emblem of the association.

In August, 1878, he assembled a larger number than ever, and, having prescribed prayers and fasts for three days and three nights, delivered addresses, some of which were public, others private and reserved for believers (who were divided into the various classes of Priest-Hermits, Penitentiary Hermits, Penitent Hermits, and simple associations of the Holy League and Christian Brotherhood) and caused the so-called Confession of Amendment to be made on the 14th, 15th, and 16th August. On the 17th, the great banner with the inscription, “The Republic is the Kingdom of God,” was raised on the tower. Then, having assembled all the members at the foot of a cross, erected for the purpose, the Prophet administered the solemn oath of fidelity and obedience. At this point, one of David’s brothers tried to persuade him to renounce his perilous enterprise, but in vain; for, on the contrary, he replied to those who pointed out the possibility of a conflict, “He would, on the following day, show them a miracle to prove that he was sent from God in the form of Christ, a judge and leader, and therefore invulnerable, and that every power on earth must yield to his will; a sign from his rod of command was enough to annihilate all the forces of those who dared oppose him.” A member having remarked on the opposition of the government, he added that “he would ward off the balls with his hands, and render harmless the weapons directed against himself and his faithful followers; and the Government Carbineers themselves would act as a guard of honour to them.” More and more intoxicated with his delirium, he wrote in all seriousness to the Delegate of Public Safety--to whom he had already shown the preparations, and, later on, given a half-promise to countermand the procession--“That he was no longer able to do so, having received superior orders to the contrary from God Himself.” He threatened unbelievers with the Divine wrath, if, through want of faith, they rebelled against his will.

With such intentions, on the morning of August 18th, he set out from Montelabro at the head of an immense crowd, going down towards Arcidosso. He was dressed in a royal cloak of purple embroidered with gold ornaments, and crowned with a kind of tiara surmounted by a crest adorned with plumes; and he held in his hand the staff which he called his rod of command. His principal associates were dressed, less richly than himself, in strangely-fashioned robes of various colours, according to their position in the hierarchy of the Holy League. The ordinary members were dressed in their every-day clothes, without other mark of distinction than the emblematic breastplate previously described. Seven of the graduates of the Brotherhood carried as many banners with the motto, “The Republic is the Kingdom of God.” They sang the Davidian hymn, each stanza of which ended with the refrain, “Eternal is the Republic,” &c. It is needless to relate what took place in those last hours. The man who had shortly before called himself the King of kings, and believed himself invulnerable, fell, struck by a shot fired by the orders, perhaps by the hand, of a delegate who had many a time been his guest. It appears that he exclaimed as he fell, under the influence of a last delusion, “The victory is ours!”

It is certain that the procession he had arranged was not only unarmed, but appeared to be in every way calculated to turn out perfectly harmless. Nocito has well remarked that an examination of the strange emblematic properties of the League proved beyond all doubt that the Government had mistaken a monomaniac for a rebel.

He took his stand on that passage of the Nicene Creed, which states that Christ rose from the dead, and ascended to the right hand of the Father, “Whence He shall come to judge the quick and the dead.” Having waited in vain for the appearance of Christ, he came to believe that this part must be reserved for him. Christ had twelve apostles, therefore he wished to have twelve. Christ had included St. Peter among the number, and Lazzaretti also determined to have a St. Peter, who was distinguished by the badge of a pair of crossed keys on his breast. In imitation of the forty days’ fast, Lazzaretti fasted in mid-winter, in the island of Monte Cristo, and there received communications from God amid the noise of the tempest, the crash of thunders, and the shaking of the whole island. There, too, he held a sort of Last Supper with his disciples, on January 15, 1870, in the course of which he said, “Thus it has pleased Him who directs me in all my works. Know that this supper carries with it the greatest of mysteries; think that you are in a place which God has chosen for His dwelling--or, to speak more correctly, for His adoration. Here, here, not far from us, on this soil, shall be raised marvellous pyramids in honour of His most Holy Name, and the said pyramids shall be an oracle of the Divine Majesty.”

To say the truth, he did not, at this supper, institute any sacrament. But that nothing might be wanting in his mad idea of imitating Jesus Christ, he evolved a sacrament of his own--that of the Confession of Amendment--at bottom a slight variation of auricular confession.

All this, however, was not sufficient. David Lazzaretti was determined to have his _transfiguration_ and his _earthquake_, and promised them for August 18, 1878.

When the surgeon was hesitating to operate on one of his sons for calculus, he took the knife out of his hand, and performed the operation. The boy died under it, but Lazzaretti, quite undisturbed, kept on repeating, “The son of David cannot die.”

At the _post-mortem_ examination, a second tattoo mark was discovered on his body. This was the usual cross, placed inside a reversed tiara. His brothers, questioned on the subject, replied that he had had a golden seal made in France, which he called the _imperial seal_, and that after immersing it in boiling oil, he had branded, first his own flesh, and then that of his sons and his wife. With this impression (which is, in fact, a convincing proof of the insensibility to pain peculiar to the insane, and of their tendency to express their eccentric ideas by means of figures and symbols) he claimed to leave a visible sign of the descent which, in common with all his family, he boasted from the Emperor Constantine.

However, not satisfied with descent from a royal race, he also wanted to rule the world in his own person, though afterwards he was willing to content himself with the creation of a prince whom he would invest with it. In a manifesto addressed “to all Christian princes,” he makes the following proclamation:--

“I address myself to all the princes of Christendom--Catholics, schismatics, or heretics--provided only they have been baptized. It matters little whether or not they have been invested with power or the government of nations, so long as they are sprung from royal blood. I call them all, and the first one who shall present himself to me, who is not under twenty years of age, or over fifty, and has no bodily imperfection, I constitute him king in my stead.”

The strange thing is, that he was taken at his word by the Comte de Chambord, who sent an embassy to him.

“I have need,” he continued, “of a Christian alliance. I am decided, to-day, to hasten this great enterprise; and if they (the Christian princes) do not come to me within the fixed time of three years, from the date of publication of this programme, I will leave Europe and go to the unbelieving nations to do with them what I have not been able to do with Christians.

“But in that case, woe to all of you, princes of Christendom. Ye shall be punished by the seven heads of the great Antichrist, which shall arise in the midst of Europe, and, above all, by a youth, who, after my departure, shall advance from the regions of the north towards Central France, and shall pretend to be that which _I myself_ am.”

From henceforward, there appears in David Lazzaretti, the fixed idea of being the King of kings and Prince of all princes. To the head of the municipal body of Arcidosso, who would not obey him, he said, “I am the King of kings, the Monarch of all monarchs, I bear on my shoulders all the princes of the world. All the carbineers and soldiers there are, are mine, and dependent on me, and there are no ropes that can bind me.” To Minucci, who was trying to escape unnoticed, he said, “You do not know that I am the Prince of princes, the King of all the earth, and if you try to run away, I will have you stoned alive.”

The witness G. B. Rossi was present at the sermon on the 17th, and heard David say that he was the King of kings, Christ the Judge; that the Pope was no longer to reside at Rome, but that he (Lazzaretti), on certain conditions, would provide him with another residence, and that the king of Italy, too, would be his subject.

The witness Mariotti also deposed that he had heard David say in his sermon, “that he had no fear of force, and that, even with a million of soldiers, it was impossible for a subject to arrest his monarch.”

Lastly--not to lengthen the series of proofs--the witness Giuseppe Tonini heard him assert, in the sermon, that he was “the King of kings, and commanded the whole world;” while the witness Valentino Mazzetti says that Lazzaretti was determined to hold the procession of Aug. 18th at any cost, and said, “Do you think they are going to arrest us? No, no, it is not possible for subjects to arrest their monarch.”

The emblematic device he adopted is worth noting: the double C, to which he attached so much importance, representing the first and second Christ, _i.e._, Christ, the son of St. Joseph of Nazareth, and Christ, the son of the late Joseph Lazzaretti of Arcidosso. In truth, it is not in any way comprehensible what relation Christ could hold to Constantine, the latter to David, and all these to Lazzaretti. But the relation exists precisely in those strange contradictions and absurdities, which--amid the persistence of the _Prince_ idea--constantly come to the surface in monomaniacs, so that some have wished to class their disease as dementia. In fact, although they keep up the character, so to speak, far better than general paralytics, and try to give a plausible appearance to their delirium, yet, oftentimes, when overpowered with the necessity of finding a vent for their persistent ambitious idea, they pay no attention to the contradictions they fall into. A Pavia embroideress, believing herself a descendant of the Bonaparte family, modelled her dress, language, and aspect with great success on those of the members of the reigning families. Yet, while she asserted herself to be the daughter of Marie Louise, she at the same time claimed Victor Emmanuel as her father; as, on other occasions, she tried to persuade us that she had found the poison of vipers in the eggs she was eating.

Thus, though at first calling on the Pope to liberate Italy, Lazzaretti, when excommunicated, or merely treated with contempt by the Pope, wrote against Papal idolatry. Though he wished to die a member of the Catholic Apostolic Church, he inveighed against auricular confession, which is the very pivot of Catholicism; and, while he called himself the son of David, he also wished to be thought the son of Constantine.

_Passanante._--Passanante, the would-be regicide of Naples, has no morbid hereditary antecedents.[429] At the age of 29, his height was 1·63 m., and his weight 51½ kilogrammes, _i.e._, 14 kilogrammes less than the Neapolitan average. His head may be described as almost sub-microcephalic--cephalic index 82, probable capacity 1513. His features show the characteristics of the Mongol and the _cretin_--small and deeply-set eyes abnormally far apart, zygomatic bones highly developed, beard scanty. The pupils show a low degree of mobility; and the genitals are atrophied--a fact connected with that of almost complete anaphrodisia. On the other hand, the liver and spleen are hypertrophied, which partly explains the increase of the temperature (varying from 38° to 37·8° at the arm-pits) the weakness of the pulse (88), and the very slight degree of strength, which, moreover, is less on the right side (60 kil.) than on the left (78 kil.). This last fact--which perhaps arises from an old burn on the hand--is most important, because rendering the complete carrying out of the crime improbable, especially taking into account the clumsy weapon with which he was armed, and the unfavourable position which was the only one he could take. The sensibility was perverted--the tactile presenting 5 mm. on the back of the hand (where the normal sensitiveness is from 16 to 20), and 7 on the forehead, where it is usually from 20 to 22 (that on the palm of the hand was not registered). On the contrary, the sensitiveness of the skin to puncture was much weakened. In prison he had attacks of delirium accompanied by hallucinations.

All these characteristics are clear indications of disease, both in the abdominal viscera, and in the nervous centres. This result is even more evident from the psychological study of the case. A merely superficial examination might have induced the belief that his affections and moral sentiments were normal. He showed, indeed, a horror of crime, lived a most frugal and abstemious life; and, while sometimes over-religious, sometimes exaggeratedly patriotic, always appeared to prefer the advantage of others to his own. He thus presented to those unversed in the study of mental pathology, the appearance, as it were, of a martyr to an idea which had been maturing for years, the mouthpiece and tool of a powerful sect, who might call for execration politically, but as an individual commanded respect.

This view, however, is at once seen to be fallacious, (even leaving aside the delirium, which might have been the effect of imprisonment), if we remember that, as has already been said, frugality and unselfishness are special characteristics of the mattoid, and, not seldom, also of the insane, some of whom seem to have more affection for their country, and for humanity in general, than for their families and themselves, and if we notice the indifference or even pleasure with which, in his writings, he refers to the murders committed by his countrymen, when, “to the sound of axes, they make foreigners give them money,” above all, the enjoyment with which he records the cruel practical joke played on a poor man who was very fond of his cherry tree, by digging up the latter, bringing it back stripped of its fruit, and leaving it at his front door. This morbid apathy is especially revealed in the want of emotion shown after the crime, in the face of the anger of the populace which was let loose against him. Yet even the greatest fanatics among political assassins, such as Orsini, Sand, and Nobiling, have been overwhelmed by emotion after the deed, and have often attempted suicide.

The true motive of the act is quite sufficient to prove this: being dismissed from his situation on account of his political vagaries, arrested as a vagabond, and, in addition, ill-used by the police, he thought--with a vanity as boundless as his impotence to gratify it, or even to live--of imitating the heroes he had heard talked of in the clubs (and against whom he had himself declaimed), so as to find a way of ending his life by the hand of another.

“As I found myself ill-used by my employers, and felt a horror of life, I formed the design of assassinating the king, so as not to have to kill myself,” he said to the magistrate, immediately after his arrest. To the judge Azzaritti, “I attempted the king’s life in the certainty that I should be killed.” In fact, two days previously, he had been much more occupied with his dismissal from his place than with projects of regicide; and at his arrest he did all he could to make his situation more serious, reminding the delegate that he had forgotten his revolutionary card on which was written, “Death to the King! long live the Republic!” It was a case of _indirect_ suicide, such as Maudsley, Crichton, Esquirol,[430] and Krafft-Ebing have recorded in great numbers. These, however, are only committed by the insane, or by cowardly and immoral men; and I insist upon this motive all the more that he formed at the same time the means of satisfying that incoherent vanity which in him predominated over the love of life. It is well known that many vain suicidal maniacs enjoy the sight of their own death surrounded by pomp, like the Englishman who had a mass composed and executed in public, and shot himself while the _Requiescat_ was being chanted.

If, therefore, we find in him any fanaticism, it is not for politics, but for his own ridiculous and ungrammatical effusions. When he lost his temper and shed tears at the trial, the outburst was not provoked by any insult to his party, but by a refusal to permit the reading of one of his letters, and when his reputation as a scullion was attacked by the assertion that he was continually reading instead of washing up the dishes, which he flatly denied, though the implied proof of unsoundness of mind would have been entirely in his favour.

His intelligence might be called unusual and original rather than superior to the average; and appeared much more brilliant in his conversation than in his writings--in which it is difficult to find a vigorous expression, such as we so frequently meet with in the works of the insane, as distinguished from mattoids.

However, searching here and there amid the enormous mass of his writings, and piecing out their gaps, we meet with some few fragments which are both original and curious. For example, though grotesque enough, his idea of having deputies and officials chosen by lot, like soldiers for the conscription, “that they may not be so proud,” is not without originality. Equally striking is the idea of forcing the convicts, who pass their time in enforced idleness, to cultivate waste lands, of calling out the young men for conscription before they have chosen a trade, and of crying after the Emperor William who “wants five milliards from France”: “He who sows thorns should be made to walk barefoot.” Good, too, in its way, though somewhat Turkish, is that of establishing a free inn for travellers in every village.

Still more remarkable is this, which, if it had not been written some time previously, might be taken as referring to his own case: “It is blamable that the authorities should exercise severity of punishment towards a man whose only idea is to change the form of government and attack the head of the State. The country is the mother of all without distinction; to all, without distinction, the law should be sister of death, which has no respect for any, but cuts them down when their time has come.”

His contrast between man isolated and man in association with his fellows is worthy of Giusti. “When you see him alone he is weak as a glass tumbler--if you see a glass, think of the strength of man, there is no great difference; but, united, men become hard and have the strength of a thousand Samsons.”

Where he really appeared superior to the average was in his _viva-voce_ answers. Thus: “History studied practically among the people is more instructive than the history studied in books. The people is the best teacher of history,” &c. To justify the literary pretensions which seemed so inconsistent with his position as a poor cook, he replied, “Where the learned man goes astray, the ignorant often triumphs.”

When asked what takes place in the conscience when one is about to commit a bad action, he replied, “In us there are, as it were, two wills--one pushing us on, the other holding us back,--and the one that proves strongest determines the action.”

But it is precisely in his intermittent flashes of political insight, so strange in his position, that a morbid abnormality becomes evident. For it must be remarked that they constitute rather the exception than the rule. What we find, as a rule, is the commonplace and the absurd. In the same code he proposes to hang coiners and burn thieves, and abolish the death penalty! He wishes to kill the king, yet in another article he demands for him a pension of two-and-a-half millions![431]

_Guiteau._--The same thing may be said of Guiteau, who presented an enormous number of degenerative characteristics. His handwriting is quite that of the mattoid; and he was descended from a family which counted among its members many lunatics and fanatics. Advocate, theologian, politician, and swindler, he had tried all trades, and claimed to have made a great discovery about the birth of Christ. The fact is that he had spoilt a great deal of paper, and issued one or two journals and ridiculous works on _The Existence of Hell_ and on _Truth_ which he believed to be written under Divine dictation. He thought that God would pay his debts as a reward for his eccentric preachings; it was in obedience to a Divine command that he killed Garfield--yet it was only done in revenge for his failure to appoint him U.S. consul at Liverpool, ambassador to Austria, &c.--which showed great ingratitude on Garfield’s part, considering the trouble Guiteau had taken, in his own belief, to secure his election as President.[432]

_South Americans._--The number of great men in the Argentine Republic suffering from cerebral affections is so considerable that it has enabled Mejia to compose on this subject a work which is among the most curious and valuable produced in the New World.[433]

Thus, according to Mejia, Rivadura was a hypochondriac, and died of softening of the brain. Manuel Garcia also suffered from hypochondria, and finally succumbed to a brain affection. Admiral Brown was subject to the delusion that he was persecuted. Varela was epileptic, Francia was a melancholiac, Rosas was morally insane, and Monteagudo was hysterical.