Let me think. What could have inspired that Count d'Artigas with the
unfortunate curiosity to visit Healthful House? If he had not been
allowed to see my patient nothing of the kind would have happened.
Talking to Thomas Roch about his inventions brought on a fit of
exceptional violence. The director is primarily to blame for not
heeding my warning. Had he listened to me the doctor would not have
been called upon to attend him, the door of the pavilion would have
been locked, and the attempt of the band would have been frustrated.

As to the interest there could have been in carrying off Thomas Roch,
either on behalf of a private person or of one of the states of the
Old World, it is so evident that there is no need to dwell upon it.
However, I can be perfectly easy about the result. No one can possibly
succeed in learning what for fifteen months I have been unable to
ascertain. In the condition of intellectual collapse into which my
fellow-countryman has fallen, all attempts to force his secret from
him will be futile. Moreover, he is bound to go from bad to worse
until he is hopelessly insane, even as regards those points upon which
he has hitherto preserved his reason intact.

After all, however, it is less about Thomas Roch than myself that I
must think just now, and this is what I have experienced, to resume
the thread of my adventure where I dropped it:

After more rocking caused by our captors jumping into it, the boat
is rowed off. The distance must be very short, for a minute after we
bumped against something. I surmise that this something must be
the hull of a ship, and that we have run alongside. There is some
scurrying and excitement. Indistinctly through my bandages I can hear