One day Buffon, lost in thought, ascended a tower and slid down by the ropes, unconscious of what he was doing, like a somnambulist. Mozart, in carving meat, so often cut his fingers, accustomed only to the piano, that he had to give up this duty to other persons. Of Bishop Münster, it is said that, seeing at the door of his own ante-chamber the announcement: “The master of the house is out,” he remained there awaiting his own return.[82] Of Toucherel, it is told by Arago, that he once even forgot his own name. Beethoven, on returning from an excursion in the forest, often left his coat on the grass, and often went out hatless. Once, at Neustadt, he was arrested in this condition, and taken to prison as a vagabond; here he might have remained, as no one would believe that he was Beethoven, if Herzog, the conductor of the orchestra, had not arrived to deliver him. Gioia, in the excitement of composition, wrote a chapter on the table of his bureau instead of on paper. The Abbé Beccaria, absorbed in his experiments, said during mass: “_Ite! experientia facta est_.” Saint Dominic, in the midst of a princely repast, suddenly struck the table and exclaimed: “_Conclusum est contra Manicheos_.” It is told of Ampère that having written a formula, with which he was pre-occupied, on the back of a cab, he started in pursuit as soon as the cab went off.[83] Diderot hired vehicles which he then left at the door and forgot, thus needlessly paying coachmen for whole days. He often forgot the hour, the day, the month, and even the person to whom he was speaking; he would then speak long monologues like a somnambulist.[84] Rossini, conducting the orchestra at the rehearsal of his _Barbiere_, which was a fiasco, did not perceive that the public and even the performers had left him alone in the theatre until he reached the end of an act.