She has
      her little eccentricities, to be sure—but then, you know, all old
      women—all _very_ old women—are more or less eccentric!”

      “To be sure,” said I,—“to be sure—and then the rest of these
      ladies and gentlemen—”

      “Are my friends and keepers,” interupted Monsieur Maillard,
      drawing himself up with _hauteur_,—“my very good friends and
      assistants.”

      “What! all of them?” I asked,—“the women and all?”

      “Assuredly,” he said,—“we could not do at all without the women;
      they are the best lunatic nurses in the world; they have a way of
      their own, you know; their bright eyes have a marvellous
      effect—something like the fascination of the snake, you know.”

      “To be sure,” said I,—“to be sure! They behave a little odd,
      eh?—they are a little queer, eh?—don’t you think so?”

      “Odd!—queer!—why, do you really think so? We are not very
      prudish, to be sure, here in the South—do pretty much as we
      please—enjoy life, and all that sort of thing, you know—”

      “To be sure,” said I,—“to be sure.”

      “And then, perhaps, this Clos de Vougeot is a little heady, you
      know—a little strong—you understand, eh?”

      “To be sure,” said I,—“to be sure. By the bye, Monsieur, did I
      understand you to say that the system you have adopted, in place
      of the celebrated soothing system, was one of very rigorous
      severity?”

      “By no means. Our confinement is necessarily close; but the
      treatment—the medical treatment, I mean—is rather agreeable to
      the patients than otherwise.”

      “And the new system is one of your own invention?”

      “Not altogether. Some portions of it are referable to Professor
      Tarr, of whom you have, necessarily, heard; and, again, there are
      modifications in my plan which I am happy to acknowledge as
      belonging of right to the celebrated Fether, with whom, if I
      mistake not, you have the honor of an intimate acquaintance.”

      “I am quite ashamed to confess,” I replied, “that I have never
      even heard the names of either gentleman before.”

      “Good heavens!” ejaculated my host, drawing back his chair
      abruptly, and uplifting his hands. “I surely do not hear you
      aright! You did not intend to say, eh? that you had never heard
      either of the learned Doctor Tarr, or of the celebrated Professor
      Fether?”

      “I am forced to acknowledge my ignorance,” I replied; “but the
      truth should be held inviolate above all things. Nevertheless, I
      feel humbled to the dust, not to be acquainted with the works of
      these, no doubt, extraordinary men. I will seek out their
      writings forthwith, and peruse them with deliberate care. Monsieur Maillard, you have really—I must confess it—you have
      really—made me ashamed of myself!”

      And this was the fact. “Say no more, my good young friend,” he said kindly, pressing my
      hand,—“join me now in a glass of Sauterne.”

      We drank. The company followed our example without stint. They
      chatted—they jested—they laughed—they perpetrated a thousand
      absurdities—the fiddles shrieked—the drum row-de-dowed—the
      trombones bellowed like so many brazen bulls of Phalaris—and the
      whole scene, growing gradually worse and worse, as the wines
      gained the ascendancy, became at length a sort of pandemonium in
      petto. In the meantime, Monsieur Maillard and myself, with some
      bottles of Sauterne and Vougeot between us, continued our
      conversation at the top of the voice. A word spoken in an
      ordinary key stood no more chance of being heard than the voice
      of a fish from the bottom of Niagara Falls. “And, sir,” said I, screaming in his ear, “you mentioned
      something before dinner about the danger incurred in the old
      system of soothing. How is that?”

      “Yes,” he replied, “there was, occasionally, very great danger
      indeed. There is no accounting for the caprices of madmen; and,
      in my opinion as well as in that of Dr. Tarr and Professor
      Fether, it is never safe to permit them to run at large
      unattended. A lunatic may be ‘soothed,’ as it is called, for a
      time, but, in the end, he is very apt to become obstreperous. His
      cunning, too, is proverbial and great. If he has a project in
      view, he conceals his design with a marvellous wisdom; and the
      dexterity with which he counterfeits sanity, presents, to the
      metaphysician, one of the most singular problems in the study of
      mind. When a madman appears thoroughly sane, indeed, it is high
      time to put him in a straitjacket.”

      “But the danger, my dear sir, of which you were speaking, in your
      own experience—during your control of this house—have you had
      practical reason to think liberty hazardous in the case of a
      lunatic?”

      “Here?—in my own experience?—why, I may say, yes. For example:—no
      very long while ago, a singular circumstance occurred in this
      very house. The ‘soothing system,’ you know, was then in
      operation, and the patients were at large. They behaved
      remarkably well—especially so—any one of sense might have known
      that some devilish scheme was brewing from that particular fact,
      that the fellows behaved so remarkably well. And, sure enough,
      one fine morning the keepers found themselves pinioned hand and
      foot, and thrown into the cells, where they were attended, as if
      they were the lunatics, by the lunatics themselves, who had
      usurped the offices of the keepers.”

      “You don’t tell me so! I never heard of any thing so absurd in my
      life!”

      “Fact—it all came to pass by means of a stupid fellow—a
      lunatic—who, by some means, had taken it into his head that he
      had invented a better system of government than any ever heard of
      before—of lunatic government, I mean. He wished to give his
      invention a trial, I suppose, and so he persuaded the rest of the
      patients to join him in a conspiracy for the overthrow of the
      reigning powers.”

      “And he really succeeded?”

      “No doubt of it. The keepers and kept were soon made to exchange
      places. Not that exactly either—for the madmen had been free, but
      the keepers were shut up in cells forthwith, and treated, I am
      sorry to say, in a very cavalier manner.”

      “But I presume a counter-revolution was soon effected. This
      condition of things could not have long existed. The country
      people in the neighborhood—visitors coming to see the
      establishment—would have given the alarm.”

      “There you are out. The head rebel was too cunning for that. He
      admitted no visitors at all—with the exception, one day, of a
      very stupid-looking young gentleman of whom he had no reason to
      be afraid.