Case CLXVII

Mr. B. de G. was engaged in an office under government, and inhabited, previously to his arrival in Paris, a provincial town, where his mode of life excited much attention. He suddenly changed his hotel, and took his meals out, no one knew where. At times, he cooked his food during the night; and when he dined in town, he would not touch any dish until it had been tasted by others. Such was his mistrust that he closed his doors with several locks, and made those who came to see him wait a long time for admission. In order to defy curiosity, he spoke of projected voyages which he had no intention of making. His gloomy and uncourteous character had created antipathies towards him, which his superior desired to avert by speaking kindly with him on the subject; but he coolly replied, that there was an association of poisoners, headed by one Me-rope (an imaginary personage), whose agents pursued him everywhere, and had partially succeeded in their attempts on him, since he suffered the most dreadful pains in his bowels.

* Bottex, op. cit.

Shortly after his arrival in Paris, he told the clerks in his office that he had seen a man hidden behind a hedge, who was about to fire on him, or at least who had his gun pointed, and that on his approach the murderer disappeared. He added his assurance that a man, whom he could not recognize, had come in the night to saw the bars which, closed his room-door, and he asked the loan of a pair of pistols from one of the clerks, in order to defend himself against the attacks of this person. Going one day to St. Germain by the railroad, he saw several men in the same carriage with himself who looked at him in a very threatening manner; he left them, took a wagon, and on the following day bought a pair of pistols. And since then some person had attempted to stab him with a poniard.

This man saw none but enemies surrounding him, who spread calumnious reports, and endeavored to annoy and poison him. Every one pointed at him, and treated him as a madman, on account of his fears and his mode of life. Above all, he accused one of the superior clerks of having seriously injured him, by revealing his troubles, which he had confided to him under the seal of secrecy.

Six years previously, being at Fontainebleau, he heard two Englishmen reading a mysterious letter, in which neither himself nor any one of his acquaintance were mentioned; but the terms in which it was conceived, and the kind of conversation held by the foreigners, inspired him with the belief that persons were suborned to destroy him.

This hallucinated man, who always carried arms, said that on several occasions he had been on the point of using them, but waited until the individuals were near enough for him to touch them before he fired.

It was under the influence of this idea that M. R. de G. called on M. D., who was head of a government office, and, in a state of great excitement, making him the personification of all his imagined enemies, fired two pistols at him, and then attempted suicide.

In listening to the recital of these events, all medical men were agreed in recognizing an hallucinated monomaniac. It is important to notice that this idea of poisoning, and these continual appearances of evil-disposed persons, which had lasted during eight years, had not prevented M. R. de G. from filling with distinction the administrative career which he had embraced, and that, on the eve of his arrest, he was engaged in drawing up a work which did not betray the slightest derangement of mind.

The council-chamber of the highest tribunal in Paris, after a long examination, and a medico-legal inquest, gave a verdict of acquittal, and placed him at the disposal of the prefect of police.*