For this reason I began to fear his brain was touched; of which, indeed, I had soon the most fatal proof; for Barbara, having led him to his chamber, came back, assuring me that he was going mad, that his mind was already in a ferment, and, in a word, that that horrible distraction which sooner or later overtakes the confirmed drinker, was lighting the torch in his brain that could only go out with life itself. A physician was sent for: our fears were but too just, and before dawn the miserable youth was raving distracted. The day that followed was one of distraction, not only to the wretched Abbot, but to myself; and I remember it as a confused dream. The only thing that dwells on my recollection, apart from the outcries in Abbot's chamber and the tumult in my own heart, is, that some one who owed me a sum of money, due that day, came and paid it into my hands with great punctiliousness, and that I received and wrote the acquittance for it with as much accuracy as if nothing were the matter, though my thoughts were far from the subject before me. At eleven o'clock at night a messenger came to me from the prison, and his news was indeed frightful. The wretched Ralph had just been discovered with his throat cut from ear to ear, having made way with himself in despair. A few moments after I was summoned to the death-bed of his brother. I shall never forget the horror of that young man's dissolution. He lay, at times, the picture of terror, gazing upon the walls, along which, in his imagination, crept myriads of loathsome reptiles, with now some frightful monster, and now a fire-lipped demon, stealing out of the shadows and preparing to dart upon him as their prey. Now he would whine and weep, as if asking forgiveness for some act of wrong done to the being man is most constant to wrong--the loving, the feeble, the confiding; and anon, seized by a tempest of passion, the cause of which could only be imagined, he would start up, fight, foam at the mouth, and fall back in convulsions. Once he sat up in bed, and, looking like a corpse, began to sing a bacchanalian song; on another occasion, after lying for many minutes in apparent stupefaction, he leaped out of bed before he could be prevented, and, uttering a yell that was heard in the street, endeavoured to throw himself from the window. But the last raving act of all was the most horrid. He rose upon his knees with a strength that could not be resisted, caught up his pillow, thrust it down upon the bed with both hands, and there held it, with a grim countenance and a chuckling laugh. None understood the act but myself: no other could read the devilish thoughts then at work in his bosom. It was the scene enacted in the chamber of his parent--he was repeating the deed of murder--he was exulting, in imagination, over a successful parricide.