His boyish reveries--the gentleness of speech and poetry of thought of
his first youthful days, were now, by the unsearchable and arbitrary
influences of his disease, revived in his broken words, renewed in his
desolate old age of madness and crime, breathed out in unconscious
mockery by his lips, while the foam still gathered about them, and the
last flashes of frenzy yet lightened in his eyes.
This unnatural calmness of language and vividness of memory, this
treacherous appearance of thoughtful, melancholy self-possession, would
often continue through long periods, uninterrupted; but, sooner or
later, the sudden change came; the deceitful chain of thought snapped
asunder in an instant; the word was left half uttered; the wearied limbs
started convulsively into renewed action; and as the dream of violence
returned and the dream of peace vanished, the madman rioted afresh in
his fury; and journeyed as his visions led him, round and round his
temple sanctuary, and hither and thither, when the night was dark and
death was busiest in Rome, among the expiring in deserted houses, and
the lifeless in the silent streets.
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