However, besides somnambulists who during slumber simply repeat the usual acts of their life, there are others who do special things to which they are unaccustomed. It is these cases which are most interesting from my point of view. I shall take one case which has been specially well reported. A hysterical patient, a girl of 24 years of age, was admitted as an in-patient to the hospital Laënnec. One Sunday, she got up about one o’clock in the morning. The night watchman, who was alarmed, went for the night doctor, who witnessed the following scene. “The patient went to the staircase leading to the nurses’ quarters, then suddenly turned round and walked towards the wash-house. The door of that being closed, she then groped for a time and turned towards the women’s dormitory in which she had formerly slept. She went up to the top of the house where this dormitory was, and when she got on the landing, opened a window leading to the roof, went out of the window, walked along the gutter, under the horrified eyes of the nurse who followed her and who did not dare to speak to her, went in again by another window and went down the stairs.” “It was at this moment that I saw her,” said the night doctor; “she was walking noiselessly, her gait was automatic, her arms hanging by her sides, a little bent, the head erect and fixed, her hair disordered, her eyes wide open; she seemed like some strange apparition.”[164] This is obviously the case of a hysterical subject, who in a normal condition was not accustomed to climb upon roofs and walk along the gutters. Another observation, reported by Charcot, related to a young man, seventeen years old, the son of a large manufacturer, and of good address. Tired out by working for his final examination, he had gone to bed early. Some time later he rose from the bed in his college dormitory, went out by a window, and without accident climbed on the roof and took a long and dangerous walk along the gutters. He was awakened before any accident occurred (Feinkind, p. 70). A case observed by Dr. Mesnet and M. Mottet was still more interesting. A lady thirty years old and extremely hysterical got out of bed in the night, “dressed herself, completed her toilet without help, removed the furniture in her way without stumbling against it. She was indifferent and idle by day, but strenuous at night in performing the most varied acts. I have seen her walking about in her rooms, opening doors, going down to the garden, leaping on seats with the utmost agility, running about, in fact doing all these things much better than in her waking hours, in which she got about only slowly and with aid” (Feinkind, p. 84).