HEALTHFUL HOUSE 3

acres, planted with timber of those magnificent species
which abound in that portion of North America which
lies in the same latitudes as the Canaries and Madeira.
At the lower edge of the park stretched the wide estuary
of the Neuse, perpetually refreshed by the breezes of
Pamlico Sound, and the ocean winds coming from afar.

At Healthful House, where the wealthy patients were
nursed under: excellent hygienic conditions, cures were
numerous. But although in general the establishment was
reserved for the treatment of chronic illness, the adminis-
tration did not refuse to admit patients afflicted with mental
disorders, when these were not of an incurable kind.

Now, just at that time—a circumstance likely to attract
attention to Healthful House, and perhaps the motive of
the visit of Count d’Artigas—a personage of great notoriety
had been detained there for eighteen months under special
observation.

This personage was a Frenchman named Thomas Roch,
aged forty years. That he was under the influence of a
mental malady could not be dcubted, but up to the present
the doctors had not pronounced him positively insane.
That he was wanting in common sense in the most simple
acts of life was only too certain. Still, his reason remained
clear, powerful, incontestable, when an appeal was made
to his genius—and who does not know that “great wits
to madness often are allied”? It is true his affective
and sensorial. faculties were seriously disordered. When
these were called into action, they manifested themselves
in delirium and incoherence. Then the man was merely

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