distinction between the real and imaginary sitter, and I have often
maintained stoutly that my patrons had already sat to me on the previous
day. At last I became convinced that it was the real sitters that I saw,
and thenceforth all became confusion. I suppose my friends took alarm at
my hallucinations, for I remember nothing of what happened during the
thirty years that I remained in the madhouse. This long period has left
no trace on my memory, except indeed the last six months of my
confinement. It seems to me, however, that when my friends talk of
having visited me I have some vague recollection of the fact; but it is
a subject that I do not care to pursue.”
The most remarkable feature of the case is, that this artist after a
lapse of thirty years resumed his pencil, and painted almost as well as
when he was forced by madness to abandon his art.
This faculty of being able to evoke shadows, with which to people one’s
solitude, may be carried so far as to transform real persons into
phantoms. Hyacinth Langlois, a distinguished artist, living at Rouen,
tells us that Talma, with whom he was extremely intimate, confided to
him that, whenever he went upon the stage, he had the power, by mere
force of will, to cause the clothes and flesh of his numerous auditory
to disappear, and become transformed from living beings into so many
skeletons. When his imagination had peopled the house with these
singular phantoms, the emotion he felt was so great that it gave his
dramatic powers still greater force, and enabled him to produce the
wonderful effects that have made his name so famous.
Wigan says, that he once knew a most intelligent and amiable man, who
could at will evoke his own image. He often laughed at seeing his second
self standing before him, the phantom appearing to laugh as heartily as
himself. This illusion was for a long time a matter of amusement to him,
but at last he became persuaded that he was haunted by his own double.
His second self appeared to hold arguments with him continually, and
beat him frequently on various points of dispute, a matter which
mortified him excessively, as he was rather proud of his powers of
reasoning. This gentleman, although always considered as being somewhat
eccentric, was never put under the slightest restraint, and at last the
creature of his imagination so tormented him, that he resolved not to
live through another year. He consequently paid all his debts, arranged
his affairs, and waited pistol in hand until the clock struck twelve on
the 31st of December, and then deliberately blew out his brains.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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