time. I have no occasion for a longer sitting, and I pass on to some one else. When I wish to continue the first portrait, I take the sitter in my imagination, and I seat him in the chair, where I see him as distinctly as if he were really there, and I can even heighten a tint, or soften down a clumsy form at will, without altering the likeness. I look from time to time at the imaginary figure, and I go on painting. I stop now and then to examine his position, absolutely as if the original were before me; for every time I look towards the chair I see the sitter. This method of proceeding has rendered me very popular; and as I have always succeeded in catching the likeness of my patrons, they have been simply enchanted at my sparing them the tedious sittings exacted by other painters. Little by little I have begun to lose the distinction between the real and imaginary sitter, and I have often maintained stoutly that my patrons had already sat to me on the previous day. At last I became convinced that it was the real sitters that I saw, and thenceforth all became confusion. I suppose my friends took alarm at my hallucinations, for I remember nothing of what happened during the thirty years that I remained in the madhouse. This long period has left no trace on my memory, except indeed the last six months of my confinement. It seems to me, however, that when my friends talk of having visited me I have some vague recollection of the fact; but it is a subject that I do not care to pursue."
The most remarkable feature of the case is, that this artist after a lapse of thirty years resumed his pencil, and painted almost as well as when he was forced by madness to abandon his art.
This faculty of being able to evoke shadows, with which to people one's solitude, may be carried so far as to transform real persons into phantoms. Hyacinth
