"Certainly, madame; I so regard all communications made by my patients,"
the gentleman courteously responded.

"I have a son," madame resumed, "who has of late betrayed symptoms of the
strangest mania, although he appears to be in perfect health in all other
respects. He imagines that some gigantic robbery has been committed;
sometimes he declares that bonds to a large amount have been stolen, at
other times it is money, then again that costly jewels have disappeared;
but the strangest phase of his malady consists in the fact that he
accuses me, and sometimes other members of the family, of being the
thief, and insists that he must have me arrested. This has gone on for
some time, and I have been obliged to adopt every kind of device in order
to keep him from carrying out his threats and thus creating a very
uncomfortable scandal. This morning he became more violent than usual,
and I felt obliged to take some decided step in regard to proper
treatment for him; therefore my visit to you."

"It is a singular mania, truly," said the physician, who had been
listening with the deepest interest to his companion's recital. "I
think I never have met with anything exactly like it before in all my
experience. How old is your son, Mrs. Walter?"

"Twenty-four years," the woman replied, with a heavy sigh; "and," she
added, tremulously, "I cannot bear the thought of sending him to any
common lunatic asylum. I learned recently that you sometimes receive
private patients to test their cases before sending them to a public
institution, and that you have frequently effected a cure in critical
cases. Will you take my son and see what you think of his case--what you
can do for him? I shall not mind the cost--I wish to spare nothing, and
I do not wish any one, at least of our friends and acquaintances, to know