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248 "though this be madness,
Note: This text has been automatically extracted via Optical Character Recognition (OCR) software. The text has not been manually corrected and should not be relied on to be an accurate representation of the item.
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Transcript
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Note: This text has been automatically extracted via Optical Character Recognition (OCR) software. The text has not been manually corrected and should not be relied on to be an accurate representation of the item.
Additionally, when viewing full transcripts, extracted text may not be in the same order as the original document.
, • . „ Turned Abl Si Army X Months Poss...
family ; and I have helped them whenever it was possible to do so , even at the risk of injuring my own interests ; I have shared
my dwelling * and my food with them , and have never accepted as much from them even for four-and-twenty hours . "
These and many other letters are remarkable for strength and precision ; and so far no trace appeared of the slightest flaw in the
mind . For a considerable time the most prolonged conversations , the most elaborately contrived trials , betrayed nothing ; but as
Mdlle . M was much given to writing , M . Trelat indulged her to the utmostand took care to read attentively all that she
_jmt upon paper . , And thus ifc was that she let the cat out of the bag . One of her letters to her brother , a letter four pages in
length , and full of admirable arguments , was finished off by these five words , penned in a handwriting much smaller than the rest of
the letter : " / am—we are rich . " That was enough . M . Trelat understood it all at onceand a very short time proved him riht .
The delirium made rapid , progress . At the end of some weeks g Mdlle . M wrote to the Prefet de Police , to the Prefet de la
Seine , to the Archbishop , to the Prince of Muscovy , to the son of MarshalExelniansto several counsellors of stateto the professors
of the E _, cole de Droi , t , to the Registrar-General , , to M . Paillet , to M . Coquerelpastor of the Protestant church in Paristo the
Minister of , the Interiorto the Minister of Financeand , to the Emperor . This clear and , precise intellect yielded to the , monomania
of making inventions . She undertakes to do away with the fraudulent obliteration of stamped paper ; vide letter to the
Minister of Finance , December 3 rd , 1853 . She proposes to remedy the impossibility which has hitherto existed of exercising an
efficient control over the distribution of town and suburban letters . ( Letters to the Postmaster-Generaland to the above minister
likewise dated December , 1853 . ) Moreover , , the attentive analysis she has made of the sand brought to the Salpetriere and the
petrifactions and numerous bits of charcoal which she finds therein , prove to her that there is both a petrifying spring and a coal mine
near Paris , which cannot be far from the surface . ( Letters to the Prefet de la Seine , and the Minister of the Interior . ) At the same
epoch she unfolds to the Archbishop , the Minister of the Interior , and the Emperora new system of the universe . This is not a
little grandiloquent , , and shows that the clear mental powers were failing in their application ; nevertheless she treatsand not ill
of spirit , of matter , of the Divine Creator ; of the stars , , of man- , kindof organic life and of deathin theories which it would
require , a volume to develop . At the , same period she gives the Emperor and her favorite minister a design of a toni'b which shall
contain the body of the First Napoleon , together with that of the Empress Josephinethe Queen Hortenseand the Due de Reichstadt .
Lastly , in May , 1854 , , she memorializes the , minister on the extinction
of pauperism , and the organization of labor , opening thus : " The
248 "Though This Be Madness,
248 " though this be madness ,
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Citation
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English Woman’s Journal (1858-1864), June 1, 1862, page 248, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/ewj/issues/ewj_01061862/page/32/
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