"This frightful scene lasted for four hours. Flight was impossible, for he had taken care to close all the doors; besides which, he was too strong for me. At length the crisis arrived: 'I must kill you!' he cried, in accents of fury which it is impossible to describe. It was no longer time to temporize. I sprang up and grappled him. The struggle was terrible. He bit me till my blood flowed in torrents; and roared out in his rage, calling me Satan. My strength began to fail; I was on the point of yielding to the power of a furious madman; but an idea struck me as by inspiration. 'My friend,' said I, 'God commands me to obey you; but let me place robes around you, in order to render you the homage that is your due.'

"The words were hardly pronounced, when he unclasped his hold, became calm, and assisted in the execution of the idea that had so happily occurred to me. I bound him with cords, napkins, and sheets, with the aid of his wife, whom also he would have sacrificed. Thus situated, he tried to rise; when, comprehending that he was bound, his transports of fury were so violent, that, if several men had not run to our assistance, the results would have been dreadful."

When Mr. P. was brought to my establishment, he still bore the marks of the struggle he had maintained. I had him put into a bath, where he remained for eight hours, receiving a constant flow of water on his head - a method which I employ very successfully in such cases. Occasionally, he was calm; then he declared he was God, Jesus Christ, or an emperor, and that we were all devils. He saw before him heaps of gold and precious stones, which he lavished on all around him.

Daring the night, he had a fit of frenzy, which was exhibited by howlings. With his feet and elbows, he demolished everything in his room. He was completely out of his mind. In his lucid intervals, he said that he had fought with persons who were throwing shovelsfull of earth on his head.

The words king, queen, and guillotine, occurred often in his ravings, without our being able to bring them into any connection.

Five days afterwards, he struck one of the keepers with an iron bar that he had torn from the window-frame. He afterwards explained this act by saying that a voice had revealed to him that he could rake the dead; he had, therefore, intended to kill the man, cut off his head, and then revive him. He constantly saw lions, leopards, and chameleons, of which he gave vivid de-criptions.

As his malady increased, he ceased using the French tongue, which he spoke without accent, and with as much purity as his own. All his soliloquies were in English. It is a peculiarity, already pointed out, and which our experience has confirmed, that the insane, during their delirium, always return to the use of their native tongue, although it is sometimes less familiar to them than that of the country in which they reside.

Mr. P. frequently imitated the sound of trumpets. At such times, he thought he was hunting lions and leopards. When he killed them, he uttered cries of joy. At other times, his walls were tapestried with gold, and covered with precious stones. The persons about him changed their identity, and he spoke to them in accordance with his conception of their character. He addressed them with clearness, relative to events with which they were acquainted. At times, he imagined he was increasing in height, and in order to avoid reaching the ceiling, he doubled himself up to but half his size.

These hallucinations and illusions continued uninterruptedly for two months. His appetite was good, his countenance underwent no alteration, his eye was always bright and intelligent. But he then began to show signs of failing, his limbs fell away; and it became evident that he would sink under the seve-10 rity of the disease. In the third month of his residence in my establishment his speech became thick and embarrassed; every symptom of congestion of the brain was developed; and two days after, he expired in a state of coma.

How could so powerful an organization pay a fatal tribute to insanity! This question was at length solved. We learned that a marriage, contracted against the consent of his parents and friends, had been a fruitful source of disagreement and vexation. The cruel death of a near relative, who was massacred at Rome by an ignorant and furious mob, by whom he was accused, during a cholera epidemic, of poisoning children, had also been a subject of much grief to him; for, with men of his temperament, the impossibility of revenge is a great torment.

Hallucinations may, with maniacs, be exhibited at the commencement of the malady, may precede it, may coexist with and cease with it, or they may exist after it.

Those of hearing and sight most frequently coexist with it.

Sometimes the one replaces the other.

Very frequently they are accompanied by illusions.

It sometimes happens that illusions are transformed into hallucinations, and vice versa. A maniac thinks that all the persons who approach him are frightful animals; then,by a process natural to man, he detaches the image from the idea, places it before his eyes, and, frightened at his own creation, howls, and engages in furious combats with the imaginary animal. At other times these maniacs, after thinking they recognize acquaintances in strangers, see those persons before them, speak to them, and receive answers. These changes are observable in other forms of mental aberration.

Hallucinations, like mental diseases, may be symptomatic. A woman was attacked with a violent complaint in the intestines; she became deranged, wept, sang, and talked incoherently. In the midst of her delirium, she thought she saw large fish in the yard, for which she angled. At times, she exhibited much fear, believing these fish were about to eat her. In proportion as the intestinal affection diminished, these ideas began to decrease, and when she quitted us, she was entirely cured.

Hallucinations and illusions may occasion dissoluteness of an extraordinary character.