XII
THE SCARLET BLOSSOM
"In the name of His Imperial Majesty the Lord Emperor Peter the First, I order a revision of this Asylum!"
These words were uttered in a loud, strident, resounding voice. The clerk who had registered the patient in a large dilapidated book lying on an ink-bespattered table could not restrain a smile. But the two young men who had escorted the patient did not smile. They could scarcely keep on their feet after forty-eight hours without sleep, passed alone with the lunatic whom they had just brought along by train. At the station immediately preceding their destination the attack had increased in its intensity and they had succeeded in obtaining a strait-jacket from somewhere, which, with the assistance of the train-conductors and a gendarme, they had placed on the patient, and had brought him to the town, and finally to the Asylum in this dress.
He was dreadful to look at. Over his body and above his grey suit, which had been torn into rags during his paroxysms, was stretched a jacket of coarse canvas opened in front; its sleeves, which were fastened behind, forced his arms crosswise against his chest. His blood- shot eyes (he had not slept for ten days) blazed with a fixed and intense glare. His lower lip was twitching with a nervous tremor, whilst his tangled, curly hair fell mane- like over his forehead. With rapid, agitated steps, he230
