Hardly had Albano made known to the overseer of the madhouse, a young, sleek, rosy little man, his name, which the little man already knew, and his petition for Schoppe's liberty, together with his security for him, when the overseer smiled upon him with uncommon complacency, and said, "I have quietly watched the whole house for years. I seize greedily the minutest traits for a future, philosophical public; and so also did I apply myself very seriously to Mr. Schoppe. But never, Sir Count, never have I detected in him a trait or trick which would have promised insanity; on the contrary, he reads all my English and German works on the subject, and converses with me upon the modes of treatment in hospitals for the insane. A disciple of Fichte he may be (I infer it from his 'I'), and a humorist, too; now if each of these is, of itself, hard to distinguish from craziness, how much more their union! with what joyful anticipation of the coincidence of our observations I give you here the key to his chamber, conceive for yourself!" "If he is not a fool," said his wife, "why then does he smash all the looking-glasses?" "For that very reason," replied the overseer; "but if he is a fool, then is thy husband a still greater." Never did Albano open a door with heavier heart than this to Schoppe's little chamber. "I am come to take thee away, my brother," he cried immediately, by way of sparing himself and him the redness of shame. But when he looked at the old lion more nearly, he found him in this trap quite altered,--not tame, creeping, wagging, but broken in two, and with shattered claws weighed down to the earth. The charge of murder, which he had honestly admitted, united to Gaspard's unmerciful sentence, had filled and eaten up his proud, free breast with poisonous shame. "I fare well here, only I feel symptoms of ill health," said Schoppe, with lustreless eye and toneless voice. Albano could not hide his tears; he clung around the sick man, and said, "Magnanimous man, thou gavest me once in my sickness, health and salvation again, and I knew it not, and thanked thee not. Go with me; I must nurse thee in this thy sickness, heal and comfort thee as I can; then we travel." "Dost thou imagine, my Criton," he replied, strengthened by the balsam of his wounded pride, "that I am not a sort of Socrates, but will really go out of my _torre del filosopho_? A word of _honor_ is a thick chain." "Tell me all, spare no one; but I will tell thee thereafter a piece of news, at which thy chain shall instantly melt down!" said Albano.