Another patient, also suffering from modesty, exhibited the same resistance to medical treatment; but since he wasn’t a writer (he could barely sign his name), the town-crier cure could not be applied. Simão Bacamarte had the idea of petitioning for the man to be appointed secretary of the Academy of Hidden Talents that had been established in Itaguaí. The posts of president and secretary were by royal appointment, in memory of His Late Majesty King João V, and carried with them both the title of “Your Excellency” and the right to wear a gold medallion on one’s hat. The government in Lisbon initially refused the appointment, but when the alienist indicated that he was not proposing it as a legitimate distinction or honorary award, but merely as a therapeutic remedy in a difficult case, the government made an exception and granted his request, although not without extraordinary efforts on the part of the Minister for the Navy and Colonies, who just so happened to be the alienist’s cousin. Yet another blessed miracle.

“Quite remarkable!” people said in the street, on seeing the healthy, puffed-up expressions of the two former lunatics.

Such was his system. The rest can be imagined. Each moral or mental refinement was attacked at the point where its perfection seemed strongest, and the effect was never in doubt. There were some instances in which the predominant characteristic resisted all attempts at treatment; in such cases the alienist would attack another element, conducting his therapies much as a military strategist would, assailing first one bastion and then another until the fortress falls.

After five and a half months, the Casa Verde was empty: everyone was cured! Councillor Galvão, so cruelly afflicted by principles of fairness and moderation, had the good fortune to lose an uncle; I say good fortune because the uncle left an ambiguously worded will and Galvão obtained a favorable interpretation by corrupting the judges and deceiving the other heirs. The alienist’s sincerity was apparent on this occasion; he freely admitted that he had played no part in the cure, and that it had been all down to the healing power of nature. With Father Lopes it was an entirely different matter. Knowing that the priest knew absolutely no Hebrew or Greek, the alienist asked him to write a critical analysis of the Septuagint. The priest accepted and performed the task in short order; within two months he had written the book and was a free man. As for the apothecary’s wife, she did not stay long in the cell allocated to her and where she was always treated kindly and affectionately.

“Why doesn’t Crispim come to visit me?” she asked every day.

In reply they gave her one excuse after another; in the end they told her the truth. The worthy matron could not contain her shame and indignation. During her fits of rage, she would utter random words and phrases such as these:

“Scoundrel! Villain! Ungrateful cheat! Nothing but a peddler of spurious, rancid lotions and potions . . . Oh, the scoundrel!”