THE MADHOUSE OF PALERMO.
He who has not skimmed over the silvery waters of
the Lipari, with a summer breeze right from Italy in
his topsails, the smoke of Stromboli alone staining the
unfathomable-looking blue of the sky, and, as the sun
dipped his flaming disk in the sea, put up his helm for
the bosom of La Concha d'Oro, the Golden Shell, as
they beautifully call the bay of Palerno: he who has
not thus entered, I say, to the fairest spot on the face
of this very fair earth, has a leaf worth the turning in
his book of observation.
In ten minutes after dropping the anchor, with sky
and water still in a glow, the men were all out of the
rigging, the spars of the tall frigate were like lines pencilled
on the sky, the band played inspiringly on the
poop, and every boat along the gay Marina was freighted
with fair Palermitans on its way to the stranger
ship.
I was standing with the officer-of-the-deck by the
capstan, looking at the first star which had just sprung
into its place like a thing created with a glance of the
eye.
“Shall we let the ladies aboard, sir?” said a smiling
middy, coming aft from the gangway.
“Yes, sir. And tell the boatswain's mate to clear
away for a dance on the quarter-deck.”
In most of the ports of the Mediterranean, a ship-of-war,
on a summer cruise, is as welcome as the breeze
from the sea. Bringing with her forty or fifty gay
young officers overcharged with life and spirits, a band
of music never so well occupied as when playing for a
dance, and a deck whiter and smoother than a ball-room
floor, the warlike vessel seems made for a scene
of pleasure. Whatever her nation, she no sooner
drops her anchor, than she is surrounded by boats from
the shore; and when the word is passed for admission,
her gangway is crowded with the mirth-loving and
warm people of these southern climes, as much at
home on board, and as ready to enter into any scheme
of amusement, as the maddest-brained midshipman
could desire.
The companion-hatch was covered with its grating,
lest some dizzy waltzer should drop his partner into the
steerage, the band got out their music-stand, and the
bright buttons were soon whirling round from larboard
to starboard, with forms in their clasp, and dark eyes
glowing over their shoulders, that might have tempted
the devil out of Stromboli.
Being only a passenger myself, I was contented with
sitting on the slide of a carronade, and with the music
in my ear, and the twilight flush deepening in the fine-traced
angles of the rigging, abandoning myself to the
delicious listlessness with which the very air is pregnant
in these climates of paradise.
The light feet slid by, and the waltz, the gallopade,
and the mazurka, had followed each other till it was
broad moonlight on the decks. It was like a night
without an atmosphere, the radiant flood poured down
with such an invisible and moonlike clearness.
“Do you see the lady leaning on that old gentleman's
arm by the hammock-rail?” said the first lieutenant,
who sat upon the next gun — like myself, a
spectator of the scene.
I had remarked her well. She had been in the ship
five or ten minutes, and in that time, it seemed to me,
I had drunk her beauty, even to intoxication. The
frigate was slowly swinging round to the land breeze,
and the moon, from drawing the curved line of a gipsy-shaped
capella di paglia with bewitching concealment
across her features, gradually fell full upon the
dark limit of her orbed forehead. Heaven! what a
vision of beauty! Solemn, and full of subdued pain
as the countenance seemed, it was radiant with an almost
supernatual light of mind. Thought and feeling
seemed steeped into every line. Her mouth was large
— the only departure from the severest model of the
Greek — and stamped with calmness, as if it had been
a legible word upon her lips. But her eyes — what can
I say of their unnatural lightning — of the depth, the
fulness, the wild and maniac-like passionateness of their
every look?
My curiosity was strongly moved. I walked aft to
the capstan, and throwing off my habitual reserve with
some effort, approached the old gentleman on whose
arm she leaned, and begged permission to lead her out
for a waltz.
“If you wish it, carissima mia!” said he, turning to
her with all the tenderness in his tone of which the
honeyed language of Italy is capable.
But she clung to his arm with startled closeness, and
without even looking at me, turned her lips up to his
ear, and murmured, “Mai piu!”
At my request the officer on duty paid them the compliment
of sending them ashore in one of the frigate's
boats; and after assisting them down the ladder, I stood
upon the broad stair on the level of the water, and
watched the phosphoric wake of the swift cutter till
the bright sparkles were lost amid the vessels nearer
land. The coxswain reported the boat's return; but
all that belonged to the ship had not come back in her.
My heart was left behind.
The next morning there was the usual bustle in the
gunroom preparatory to going ashore. Glittering uniforms
lay about upon the chairs and tables, sprinkled
with swords, epaulettes, and cocked hats; very well-brushed
boots were sent to be rebrushed, and very
nice coats to be made, if possible, to look nicer; the
ship's barber was cursed for not having the hands of
Briareus, and no good was wished to the eyes of the
washerwoman of the last port where the frigate had
anchored. Cologne-water was in great request, and
the purser had an uncommon number of “private interviews.”
Amid all the bustle, the question of how to pass the
day was busily agitated. Twenty plans were proposed;
but the sequel — a dinner at the
Hotel Anglais, and a
stroll for a lark” after it — was the only point on which
the speakers were quite unanimous.
One proposition was to go to Bagaria, and see the
palace of Monsters. This is a villa about ten miles
from Palermo, which the owner, Count Pallagonia, an
eccentric Sicilian noble, has ornamented with some
hundreds of statues of the finest workmanship, representing
the form of woman in every possible combination,
with beasts, fishes, and birds. It looks like the
temptation of St. Anthony on a splendid scale, and is
certainly one of the most extraordinary spectacles in
the world.
Near it stands another villa, the property of Prince
Butera (the present minister of Naples at the court of
France), containing, in the depths of its pleasuregrounds,
a large monastery, with wax monks, of the
size and appearance of life, scattered about the passages
and cells, and engaged in every possible unclerical
avocation. It is a whimsical satire on the order,
done to the life.
Another plan was to go to the Capuchin convent,
and see the dried friars — six or eight hundred bearded
old men, baked, as they died, in their cowls and beards,
and standing against the walls in ghastly rows, in the
spacious vaults of the monastery. A more infernal
spectacle never was seen by mortal eyes.
A drive to Monreale, a nest of a village on the mountain
above the town — a visit to the gardens of a nobleman
who salutes the stranger with a jet d'eau at every
turning — and a lounge in the public promenade of
Palermo itself — shared the honors of the argument.
I had been in Sicily before, and was hesitating which
of these various lions was worthy of a second visit,
when the surgeon proposed to me to accompany him
on a visit to a Sicilian count living in the neighborhood,
who had converted his château into a lunatic asylum,
and devoted his time and a large fortune entirely to
this singular hobby. He was the first to try the system,
now, thank God, generally approved, of winning
back reason to these most wretched of human sufferers
by kindness and gentle treatment.
We jumped into one of the rattling calesini standing
in the handsome corso of Palermo, and fifteen minutes
beyond the gates brought us to the Casa dei Pazzi.
My friend's uniform and profession were an immediate
passport, and we were introduced into a handsome
court, surrounded by a colonnade, and cooled by a
fountain, in which were walking several well-dressed
people, with books, drawing-boards, battledores, and
other means of amusement. They all bowed politely
as we passed, and at the door of the interior we were
met by the count.
“Good God!” I exclaimed — “she was insane,
then!”
It was the old man who was on board the night before!
“E ella?” said I, seizing his arm, before he had
concluded his bow, quite sure that he must understand
me with a word.
“Era pazza” He looked at me as he answered,
with a scrutiny, as if he half suspected my friend had
brought him a subject.
The singular character of her beauty was quite explained.
Yet what a wreck!
I followed the old count around his establishment
in a kind of dream, but I could not avoid being interested
at every step. Here were no chains, no whips,
no harsh keepers, no cells of stone and straw. The
walls of the long corridors were painted in fresco, representing
sunny landscapes, and gay dancing figures.
Fountains and shrubs met us at every turn. The
people were dressed in their ordinary clothes, and all
employed in some light work or amusement. It was
like what it might have been in the days of the count's
ancestors — a gay château, filled with guests and dependants,
with no more apparent constraint than the
ties of hospitality and service.
We went first to the kitchen. Here were ten
people, all, but the cook, stark mad! It was one of
the peculiarities of the count's system, that his patients
led in his house the lives to which they had previously
been accustomed. A stout Sicilian peasant
girl was employed in filling a large brasier from the
basin of a fountain. While we were watching her
task, the fit began to come on her, and after a fierce
look or two around the room, she commenced dashing
the water about her with great violence. The cook
turned, not at all surprised, and patting her on the
back, with a loud laugh, cried, “Brava, Pepina!
brava!” ringing at the same moment a secret bell.
A young girl of sixteen with a sweet, smiling countenance,
answered the summons, and immediately
comprehending the case, approached the enraged
creature, and putting her arms affectionately round her
neck, whispered something in her ear. The expression
of her face changed immediately to a look of delight,
and dropping the bucket, she followed the young
attendant out of the room with peals of laughter.
“Venite!” said the count, “you shall see how we
manage our furies.”
We followed across a garden filled with the sweetest
flowers to a small room opening on a lawn. From
the centre of the ceiling was suspended a hammock,
and Pepina was already in it, swung lightly from side
to side by a servant, while the attendant stood by, and,
as if in play, threw water upon her face at every approach.
It had all the air of a frolic. The violent
laughter of the poor maniac grew less and less as the
soothing motion and the coolness of the water took
effect, and in a few minutes her strained eyes gently
closed, the hammock was swung more and more
gently, and she fell asleep.
“This,” said the count, with a gratified smile, “is
my substitute for a forced shower-bath and chains;
and this,” kissing his little attendant on the forehead,
“for the whip and the grim turnkey.” I blessed him
in my heart.
“Come!” said he, as we left the sleeper to her repose,
“I must show you my grounds.”
We followed him to an extensive garden, opening
from the back of the château, laid out originally in the
formal style of an Italian villa. The long walks had
been broken up, however, by beautiful arbors with
grottoes in their depths, in which wooden figures, of
the color and size of life, stood or sat in every attitude
of gayety or grotesqueness. It was difficult, in the
deep shadow of the vines and oleanders, not to believe
them real. We walked on through many a winding
shrubbery, perfumed with all the scented flowers of
the luxuriant climate, continually surprised with little
deceptions of perspective, or figures half concealed in
the leaves, till we emerged at the entrance of a charming
summer theatre, with sodded seats, stage, orchestra,
and scenery, complete. Orange-trees, roses, and
clematis, were laced together for a wall in the rear.
“Here,” said the old man, bounding gayly upon the
stage, “here we act plays the summer long.”
“What! not with your patients?”
“Si, signore! Who else?” And he went on to
describe to us the interest they took in it, and the singular
power with which the odd idea seized upon their
whimsied intellects. We had been accompanied from
the first, by a grave, respectable looking man, whom I
had taken for an assistant. While we were listening
to the description of the first attempt they had made
at a play, he started out from the group, and putting
himself in an attitude upon the stage, commenced
spouting a furious passage in Italian.
The count pointed to his forehead, and made a sign
to us to listen. The tragedian stopped at the end of
his sentence, and after a moment's delay, apparently
in expectation of a reply, darted suddenly off and disappeared
behind the scenes.
“Poveretto!” said the count, “it is my best actor!”
Near the theatre stood a small chapel, with a circular
lawn before it, on which the grass had been lately
much trodden. It was surrounded partly by a green
bank, and here the count seated us, saying with a significant
look at me, that he would tell us a story.
I should like to give it you in his own words — still
more with his own manner; for never was a tale told
with more elegance of language, or a more natural
and pleasant simplicity. But a sheet of “wire-wove”
is not a Palermitan cavaliere, and the cold English
has not the warm eloquence of the Italian. He laid
aside his hat, ordered fruit and wine, and proceeded.
“Almost a year ago I was called upon by a gentleman
of a noble physiognomy and address, who inquired
very particularly into my system. I explained
it to him at his request, and he did me the honor, as
you gentlemen have done, to go over my little establishment.
He seemed satisfied, and with some hesitation
informed me that he had a daughter in a very desperate
state of mental alienation. Would I go and
see her?
“This is not, you know, gentlemen, a public institution.
I am crazy,” he said it very gravely, “quite
crazy — the first of my family of fools, on this particular
theme — and this asylum is my toy. Of course it is
only as the whim seizes me that I admit a patient; for
there are some diseases of the brain seated in causes
with which I wish not to meddle.
“However, I went. With the freedom of a physician
I questioned the father, upon the road, of the
girl's history. He was a Greek, a prince of the Fanar,
who had left his degraded people in their dirty and
dangerous suburb at Constantinople, to forget oppression
and meanness in a voluntary exile. It was just
before the breaking out of the last Greek revolution,
and so many of his kinsmen and friends had been sacrificed
to the fury of the Turks, that he had renounced
all idea of ever returning to his country.
“`And your daughter?'
“`My dear Katinka, my only child, fell ill upon receiving
distressing news from the Fanar, and her
health and reason never rallied after. It is now several
years, and she has lain in bed till her limbs are withered,
never having uttered a word, or made a sign
which would indicate even consciousness of the presence
of those about her.'
“I could not get from him that there was any disappointment
of the heart at the bottom of it. It seemed
to be one of those cases of sudden stupefaction, to
which nervously sensitive minds are liable after a violent
burst of grief; and I began, before I had seen her,
to indulge in bright hopes of starting once more the
sealed fountains of thought and feeling.
“We entered Palermo, and passing out at the other
gate, stopped at a vine-laced casino on the lip of the
bay, scarcely a mile from the city wall. It was a
pretty, fanciful place, and, on a bed in its inner chamber,
lay the most poetical-looking creature I had ever
seen out of my dreams. Her head was pillowed in an
abundance of dark hair, which fell away from her forehead
in masses of glossy curls, relieving with a striking
effect, the wan and transparent paleness of a face which
the divinest chisel could scarce have copied in alabaster.
Dio mio! — how transcendant was the beauty of
that poor girl!”
The count stopped and fed his memory a moment
with closed eyes upon the image.
“At the first glance I inwardly put up a prayer to
the Virgin, and determined, with her sweet help, to
restore reason to the fairest of its earthly temples. I
took up her shadow of a hand, and spread out the thin
fingers in my palm, and as she turned her large wan
dering eye toward me, I felt that the blessed Mary
had heard my prayer, `You shall see her well again,'
said I confidently.
“Quite overcome, the prince Ghika fell on the bed
and embraced his daughter's knees in an agony of
tears.
“You shall not have the seccatura, gentlemen, of
listening to the recital of all my tedious experiments
for the first month or two. I brought her to my house
upon a litter, placed her in a room filled with every
luxury of the east, and suffered no one to approach
her except two Greek attendants, to whose services
she was accustomed. I succeeded in partially restoring
animation to her benumbed limbs by friction,
and made her sensible of music, and of the perfumes
of the east, which I burned in a pastille-lamp in
her chamber. Here, however, my skill was baffled.
I could neither amuse nor vex. Her mind was beyond
me. After trying every possible experiment, as it
seemed to me, my invention was exhausted, and I
despaired.
“She occupied, however, much of my mind.
Walking up and down yonder orange-alley one sweet
morning, about two months ago, I started off suddenly
to my chamber with a new thought. You would
have thought me the maddest of my household, to
have seen me, gentlemen. I turned out by the shoulders
the regazza, who was making my bed, washed
and scented myself, as if for a ball, covered my white
hairs with a handsome brown wig, a relic of my coxcombical
days, rouged faintly, and, with white gloves,
and a most youthful appearance altogether, sought
the chamber of my patient.
“She was lying with her head in the hollow of her
thin arm, and, as I entered, her dark eyes rested full
upon me. I approached, kissed her hand with a respectful
gallantry, and in the tenderest tones of which
my damaged voice was susceptible, breathed into her
ear a succession of delicately-turned compliments to
her beauty.
“She lay as immovable as marble, but I had not
calculated upon the ruling passion of the sex in vain.
A thin flush on her cheek, and a flutter in her temple,
only perceptible to my practised eye, told me that the
words had found their way to her long-lost consciousness.
“I waited a few moments, and then took up a ringlet
that fell negligently over her hand, and asked permission
to sever it from the glossy mass in which the
arm under her head was literally buried.
“She clutched her fingers suddenly upon it, and
glancing at me with the fury of a roused tigress, exclaimed
in a husky whisper, `Lasciate me, signore!'
“I obeyed her, and, as I left the room, I thanked
the Virgin in my heart. It was the first word she had
spoken for years.
“The next day, having patched myself up more
successfully in my leisure, in a disguise so absolute
that not one even of my pets knew me as I passed
through the corridor, I bowed myself up once more to
her bedside.
“She lay with her hands clasped over her eyes, and
took no notice of my first salutation. I commenced
with a little raillery, and under cover of finding fault
with her attitude, contrived to pay an adroit compliment
to the glorious orbs she was hiding from admiration.
She lay a moment or two without motion, but
the muscles of her slight mouth stirred just perceptibly,
and presently she drew her fingers quickly apart,
and looking at me with a most confiding expression
in her pale features, a full sweet smile broke like sudden
sunshine through her lips. I could have wept for
joy.
“I soon acquired all the influence over her I could
wish. She made an effort at my request to leave her
bed, and in a week or two walked with me in the garden.
Her mind, however, seemed to have capacity
but for one thought, and she soon began to grow unhappy,
and would weep for hours. I endeavored to
draw from her the cause, but she only buried her face
in my bosom, and wept more violently, till one day,
sobbing out her broken words almost inarticulately, I
gathered her meaning. She was grieved that I did not
marry her!
“Poor girl!” soliloquized the count, after a brief
pause, “she was only true to her woman's nature. Insanity
had but removed the veil of custom and restraint.
She would have broken her heart before she had betrayed
such a secret, with her reason.
“I was afraid at last she would go melancholy mad,
this one thought preyed so perpetually on her brain —
and I resolved to delude her into the cheerfulness necessary
to her health by a mock ceremony.
“The delight with which she received my promise
almost alarmed me. I made several delays, with the
hope that in the convulsion of her feelings a ray of
reason would break through the darkness; but she
took every hour to heart, and I found it was inevitable.
“You are sitting, gentlemen, in the very scene of our
mad bridal. My poor grass has not yet recovered, you
see, from the tread of the dancers. Imagine the spectacle.
The chapel was splendidly decorated, and at
the bottom of the lawn stood three long tables, covered
with fruits and flowers, and sprinkled here and
there with bottles of colored water (to imitate wine),
sherbets, cakes, and other such innocent things as I
could allow my crazy ones. They were all invited.”
“Good God!” said the surgeon, “your lunatics?”
“All — all! And never was such a sensation produced
in a household since the world was created.
Nothing else was talked of for a week. My worst patients
seemed to suspend for the time their fits of violence.
I sent to town for quantities of tricksy stuffs,
and allowed the women to deck themselves entirely
after their own taste. You can conceive nothing like
the business they made of it! Such apparitions! —
Santa Maria! shall I ever forget that Babel?
“The morning came. My bride's attendants had
dressed her from her Grecian wardrobe; and with her
long braid parted over her forehead, and hanging back
from her shoulders to her very heels, her close-fitted
jacket, of gorgeous velvet and gold, her costly bracelets,
and the small spangled slippers upon her unstockinged
feet, she was positively an angelic vision of beauty.
Her countenance was thoughtful, but her step was
unusually elastic, and a small red spot, like a rose-leaf
under the skin, blushed through the alabaster paleness
of her cheek.
“My maniacs received her with shouts of admiration.
The women were kept from her at first with
great difficulty, and it was only by drawing their attention
to their own gaudier apparel, that their anxiety
to touch her was distracted. The men looked at
her, as she passed along like a queen of love and
beauty, and their wild, gleaming eyes, and quickened
breaths, showed the effect of such loveliness upon the
unconcealed feelings. I had multiplied my attendants,
scarce knowing how the excitement of the scene
might affect them; but the interest of the occasion,
and the imposing decencies of dress and show, seemed
to overcome them effectually. The most sane guests
at a bridal could scarce have behaved with more propriety.
“The ceremony was performed by an elderly friend
of mine, the physician to my establishment. Old as I
am, gentlemen, I could have wished that ceremony to
have been in earnest. As she lifted up her large liquid
eyes to heaven, and swore to be true to me till death, I
forgot my manhood, and wept. If I had been younger
— ma che porcheria!
“After the marriage the women were invited to sa
lute the bride, and then all eyes in my natural party
turned at once to the feast. I gave the word. Fruits,
cakes, and sherbets, disappeared with the rapidity of
magic, and then the music struck up from the shrubbery,
and they danced — as you see by the grass.
“I committed the bride to her attendants at sunset,
but I could with difficulty tear myself away. On the
following day I called at her door, but she refused to
see me. The next day and the next I could gain no
admittance without exerting my authority. On the
fourth morning I was permitted to enter. She had resumed
her usual dress, and was sad, calm, and gentle.
She said little, but seemed lost in thought to which
she was unwilling or unable to give utterance.
“She has never spoken of it since. Her mind, I
think, has nearly recovered its tone, but her memory
seems confused. I scarce think she remembers her
illness, and its singular events, as more than a troubled
dream. On all the common affairs of life she seems
quite sane, and I drive out with her daily, and have
taken her once or twice to the opera. Last night we
were strolling on the Marina when your frigate came
into the bay, and she proposed to join the crowd and
go off to hear the music. We went on board, as you
know; and now, if you choose to pay your respects
to the lady who refused to waltz with you, take another
sip of your sherbet and wine, and come with
me.”
To say more would be trespassing perhaps on the
patience of my readers, but certainly on my own feelings.
I have described this singular case of madness
and its cure, because I think it contains in itself the
seeds of much philosophy on the subject. It is only
within a very few years that these poor sufferers have
been treated otherwise than as the possessors of incarnate
devils, whom it was necessary to scourge out
with unsparing cruelty. If this literal statement of a
cure in the private madhouse of the eccentric conte
— , of Palermo, induce the friends of a single unfortunate
maniac to adopt a kind and rational system
for his restoration, the writer will have been rapaid for
bringing circumstances before the public which have
since had much to do with his own feelings.
