We spoke to a number of people in Perast from whom we sought to find out who had once owned the deserted and already almost totally ruined palaces, for we had read nothing about them. The people we spoke to merely laughed at our questions and turned their backs on us and ran away A few kilometers down the road, in Risan, we heard that there were no more normal people living in Perast; the city had been given over to quite a large number of lunatics who could do as they liked there and were supplied with food by the state once a week.

Madness

MADNESS

A postman was suspended in Lend because for years he had not delivered any letter that he thought contained sad news or, in the nature of things, any of the cards announcing a death that came his way, but had burned them all in his own home. The post office finally had him committed to the lunatic asylum in Scherrnberg, where he goes around in a postman’s uniform and continually delivers letters that are deposited by the asylum’s administration in a letter box specially built into one of the walls of the asylum and that are addressed to his fellow patients. According to reports, the postman asked for his uniform as soon as he was committed to the lunatic asylum in Scherrnberg so as not to be driven mad.

Care

CARE

A post office official who was charged with murdering a pregnant woman told the court that he did not know why he had murdered the pregnant woman but that he had murdered his victim as carefully as possible. In response to all the presiding judge’s questions, he always used the word carefully, whereupon the court proceedings against him were abandoned.

In Rome

IN ROME