, pray let me be fully acquainted with the circumstances which have impelled you to this sudden resolution."
"Willingly, my good friend, could I only command my temper; and yet to fall into a passion with a madman is almost a mark of madness. But his manner and his conduct are so provoking and so puzzling, that I cannot altogether repress my irritability. And that ridiculous incognito! Why I sometimes begin to think that I really am Mr. von Philipson! An incognito forsooth! for what? to deceive whom? His household apparently only consists of two persons, one of whom has visited me in my own castle; and the other is a cross old hag, who would not be able to comprehend my rank if she were aware of it. But to the point! When you left the room I was determined to be trifled with no longer, and I asked him, in a firm voice and very marked manner, whether I might command his immediate attention to important business. He professed to be at my service. I opened the affair by taking a cursory, yet definite, review of the principles in which my political conduct had originated, and on which it was founded. I flattered myself that I had produced an impression. Sometimes we are in a better cue for these expositions than at others, and to-day I was really unusually felicitous. My memory never deserted. I was at the same time luminous and profound; and while I was guided by the philosophical spirit of the present day, I showed, by my various reading, that I respected the experience of antiquity. In short, I was satisfied with myself; and with the exception of one single point about the origin of slavery, which unfortunately got entangled with the feudal system, I could not have got on better had Sievers himself been at my side. Nor did I spare Mr. Beckendorff; but, on the contrary, I said a few things which, had he been in his senses, must, I imagine, have gone home. Do you know I finished by drawing his own character, and showing the inevitable effects of his ruinous policy: and what do you think he did?"
"Left you in a passion?"
"Not at all. He seemed much struck by what I had said, and apparently understood it. I have heard that in some species of insanity the patient is perfectly able to comprehend everything addressed to him, though at that point his sanity ceases, and he is unable to answer or to act. This must be Beckendorff's case;