Among the other sins of which it stands accused by the historians, the Itaguaí municipal council had made no provision for the insane. Those who were raving mad were simply locked away in their own homes, and remained uncured and uncared-for until death came to rob them of the gift of life. The tamer ones were left to wander the streets. Simão Bacamarte quickly resolved to remedy such harmful practices; he requested permission from the council to build a hospital that would provide treatment and lodgings for all the lunatics of Itaguaí and the surrounding towns and villages, in return for a stipend payable by the municipality when the patient’s family were unable to do so. The proposal excited the curiosity of the whole town and met with great resistance, for it is always hard to uproot absurd or even merely bad habits.

“Look here, Dona Evarista,” said Father Lopes, the parish priest, “why don’t you try to interest your husband in a trip to Rio de Janeiro? All this studying can’t be good for him; it gives him all sorts of strange ideas.”

Greatly alarmed, Dona Evarista went to her husband and told him that she was filled by various consuming desires, in particular the desire to go to Rio de Janeiro and eat everything that he considered would help with his previously stated objective. But with the rare wisdom that distinguished him, the great man saw through this pretense and replied, smiling, that she need have no fear. He then went straight to the town hall, where the councillors were debating his proposal, and defended it with such eloquence that the majority resolved to authorize his request, and, at the same time, voted through a local tax destined to fund the treatment, board, and lodging of any of the insane who had no other means of support. It was not easy to find something new to be taxed, for everything in Itaguaí had already been earmarked. After lengthy study, the tax was imposed on the use of plumes on funeral horses. Anyone who wished to add feathers to the headdresses of horses drawing a hearse would pay two tostões to the council for each hour that elapsed between the time of death and the final blessing at the graveside. The town clerk got himself in a terrible muddle calculating the potential revenue arising from the new tax, and one of the councillors, who had little faith in the doctor’s undertaking, asked that the clerk be relieved of such a pointless task.

“The calculations are entirely unnecessary,” he said, “because Dr. Bacamarte’s scheme will never come to anything. Whoever heard of putting all the lunatics together in the same building?”