University of Virginia Library

THE MAD HOUSE 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 Palermo—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 deck, 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 side 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 supernatural 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 gun-room
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 re-brushed,
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, and 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 pleasure-grounds, 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 heards, 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 the
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 gaiety 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 her 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
scaled 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 wandering 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 pastillelamp
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!” soliloquised 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 a 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 salute 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 mad-house 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 repaid for bringing circumstances
before the public, which have since had much to do with
his own feelings.