XV. The Old Young Man




I dreamed that I was in Rome with C., and a friend of his called
on us there, and asked leave to introduce to us a young man, a student
of art, whose history and condition were singular. They came together
in the evening. In the room where we sat was a kind of telephonic
tube, through which, at intervals, a voice spoke to me. When the
young man entered, these words were spoken in my ear through the tube:--

"You have made a good many diagnoses lately of cases of physical
disease; here is a curious and interesting type of spiritual pathology,
the like of which is rarely met with. Question this young man."

Accordingly I did so, and drew from him that about a year ago he
had been seriously ill of Roman fever; but as he hesitated, and
seemed unwilling to speak on the subject, I questioned the friend.
From him I learnt that the young man had formerly been a very
proficient pupil in one of the best-known studios in Rome, but that
a year ago he had suffered from a most terrible attack of malaria,
in consequence of his remaining in Rome to work after others had
found it necessary to go into the country, and that the malady had
so affected the nervous system that since his recovery he had been
wholly unlike his former self. His great aptitude for artistic work,
from which so much had been expected, seemed to have entirely left him;
he was no longer master of his pencil; his former faculty and
promise of excellence had vanished. The physician who had attended
him during his illness affirmed that all this was readily accounted