“When I Was Mad...” (“Quand’ero matto…”)

Translated by Miranda MacPhail

How to cite this work:

Pirandello, Luigi. “When I Was Mad... ” (“Quand’ero matto…”) , tr. Miranda MacPhail. In Stories for a Year, eds. Lisa Sarti and Michael Subialka, Digital Edition, www.pirandellointranslation.org, 2025.

“When I Was Mad…” (“Quand’ero matto…”) was first published in 1902 by Streglio in Turin as part of a collection of the same name, which included a group of other stories. The volume was reprinted in 1919 by Treves in Milan. Only in 1926, though, was the story incorporated into the volume The Old God (Il vecchio Dio), the tenth Collection of Stories for a Year (Novelle per un anno), which brought together tales from both the 1902 and 1919 editions.

Throughout his career, Pirandello was deeply fascinated by the inner struggles that shape human experience, especially when it comes to how individuals perceive reality and the fine line between reason and madness. “When I Was Mad…” (“Quand’ero matto…”) examines precisely this question, taking the reader into the mind of Fausto Bandini, a character who embodies the tension between rationality and irrationality as he is trapped between his absolute ideals and the reality of practical necessities. Bandini presents himself as a man who has gone through a phase of "madness" characterized by radical altruism and who, with age and the guidance of his wives, has learned to recognize the limits of his convictions. Both the narrator and protagonist of this story, Bandini embarks on a sort of autobiographical journey, reflecting back on the time when he was considered "mad" by others. His madness was nothing more than an extreme form of idealism rooted in the belief that the world should be based on universal mutual assistance and absolute generosity. His wealth allowed him to live without needing anything, and thus, according to his logic, his sole purpose was to give to others. Bandini even went so far as to write a treatise on morality, in an attempt to provide a rational basis for his beliefs and convince his first wife, Mirina, a completely pragmatic and selfish woman, of the futility of her materialism. This section of the story highlights Pirandello’s deep engagement with Schopenhauer’s philosophy. In fact, Bandini’s intention to write a treatise serves as a clear echo of Schopenhauer’s own philosophical explorations, particularly his argument that compassion lies at the heart of morality. If Schopenhauer contended that truly moral actions are not driven by duty or self-interest but by an authentic desire to ease the suffering of others, this same view resonates with Bandini’s reflections over the ethical dimensions of existence throughput the story. Time and experience however lead Bandini to reconsider his certainties, in part thanks to his second wife, Marta, who helps him understand the need for a less absolute worldview. The contrast between Bandini’s two wives highlights two opposing approaches to life: on the one hand, pragmatism and self-interest, and on the other, a total and blind adherence to an idealistic belief system. Bandini himself, reflecting on his past, will end up comparing his moral treatise to a catechism, recognizing that despite his claims to rationality, his worldview was not so different from a faith-based dogma.

“When I Was Mad…” fits seamlessly into Pirandello’s larger body of work, connecting to recurring leitmotifs such as the relativity of truth, the tension between identity and social roles, and the contrast between appearance and substance. Bandini’s dichotomy between being "mad" and "sane" mirrors the duality of other Pirandellian characters, from Vitangelo Moscarda in One, No One and One Hundred Thousand (Uno, nessuno e centomila, 1926), who questions his fragmented identity, to the protagonist of the famous play Henry IV (Enrico IV, 1924), who takes refuge in madness to escape an unbearable reality. Like them,  Bandini’s struggle reveals how madness and sanity are often two sides of the same existential dilemma. His journey reflects Pirandello’s broader exploration of how rigid belief systems—whether rooted in logic, social expectations, or personal dogma—inevitably collide with the fluidity of human experience.  This theme recurs in other stories, such as “The Wheelbarrow” (“La carriola,” 1917) and “The Train Has Whistled” (“Il treno ha fischiato,” 1914), where the protagonists grapple with the fragility of their certainties and the need for inner transformation. Likewise the notion of madness as an alternative way of seeing the world is also central to stories like “The License” (“La patente,” 1911), where the protagonist embraces the label of "jinx" to transform social prejudice to his advantage.

The Editors

I. Pocket Change

First of all, begging your leave, let me start off by saying that now I'm sane. Oh,  for all that, I'm also poor. Bald, too. When I was still me, I mean, the highly respected Signor Fausto Bandini, wealthy and with all my lovely hair on my head, it is nonetheless clear, crystal clear, that I was mad. And slightly thinner, of course. But always with these same eyes which have remained, since then, opened wide in fright, and with this face like an open page for the pitiful moods that chronically used to afflict me..

When distracted, every so often, I revert back to that state. But these are sparks that Marta, wise wife, immediately dampens in me with certain awful expressions of hers.

For instance, the other evening.

Things of little import, mind. What could possibly happen to a poor sane man and sane poor man, reduced to living more methodically than an ant?

The finer the weave, the more delicate the embroidery, I once read, I don't know where. But above all, it would be necessary to know how to embroider.

I was on my way home. There's nothing more bothersome, in my belief, than a beggar's insistence when one hasn’t got a coin in his pocket, and he sees in one the air of being well-disposed to give it up. It was, in my case, a girl. Without faltering, in a whining voice, for a quarter of an hour, she kept repeating the same two or three sentences to my back as she followed me. While I, playing deaf, didn't deign her with a glance. At a certain point she leaves me; meeting and sticking, like a horse fly, to a couple of newly-weds. 

"Will they give her pocket change?" I think to myself.

Ah, little do you know, girl! The first time newly-weds step out into the street, arm in arm, they believe all the world's eyes are focused on them; they feel the awkwardness of the new things all those eyes see and imagine in them, and they don't know how to pay nor can they stop to pay alms to a pauper.

Indeed, soon afterwards I hear someone running up behind me calling:

"Sir, Sir."

And there she is again with the same monotonous whining as before. I am fed up, and in my exasperation I yell:

"No!"

Even worse. It is as if, with that no, I had unstopped another couple of sentences kept in reserve for just such a case as this. I huff a first time, I huff a second time, finally, pah!—I raise my walking stick. Like this. That girl steps aside, instinctively raising her arm to protect her head, and from underneath her elbow she moans:

"Even just two cents!"

God, what eyes were opened in that haggard, yellowed face beneath reddish cottony hair. All the vices of the mean streets wormed around in those eyes; and her young age made them ghastly. (I'm not adding any exclamation mark here because, now that I'm sane, nothing must ever amaze me again.)

Even before seeing those eyes of hers, I had regretted my threatening gesture.

"How old are you?"

The girl looks at me askance, without lowering her arm, and doesn’t answer.

"Why don't you work?"

"I wish, if I could only find some. I haven't found any."

"You're not looking," I tell her, setting off again, "because you've started enjoying this fine trade."

It goes without saying; she followed me, starting her sorrowful chant all over again: that she was hungry, that I give her something for the love of God.

Could I have taken off my jacket and said to her, "Take it"? Who knows; in another time I might have done so. But then again, in other times, I would have had pocket change.

Very suddenly an idea came to me, for which I feel obliged to excuse myself in the company of sane people. To work is undoubtedly a good piece of advice; but it's so easy to give. I recalled that Marta was looking for a housemaid.

And pay heed: I term this sudden idea madness not so much for the cautious joy it inspired in me and that I recognized clearly at once—since I had felt the very thing before, back when I was mad: a kind of dazzling thrill lasting a fleeting moment, a spark, in which the world seems to pulsate and shock all our insides—as for the reflections of a poor, sane man with which I immediately tried to shore up that thrill. I thought, "As long as we give this girl something to eat, a place to sleep, and some cast-off clothing, she'll serve our needs without asking for more. It will even cost Marta less money." Like that.

"Listen," I said to the girl, "I'm not giving you any money. Do you really want to work?"

She stopped to look at me a moment with those angry eyes, below her hideously scowling brow; then she bowed her head several times.

"Yes? Well then, come along with me. I'll give you work in my own house."

The girl stopped once more, perplexed.

"And Mamma?"

"You'll go tell her afterwards. Now come along."

I had the feeling that I was walking down another street and that... I'm ashamed to say it, the houses and the little trees were in the same throes of agitation as I was. And the agitation grew, grew steadily, pushing me homewards.

What would my wife have to say?

There was no more foolish way for me to present her with the proposal (I stuttered). And certainly, of course, this foolish way must have contributed not only to making her refuse it, as was right, but also to making her angry, poor Marta. But what if, now that I've become sane, with the constant fear I might let slip some odd behavior, I no longer know how to put two words in order, one after another? That was enough; my wife didn't miss the chance to repeat her terrible, Again? Again?, which is worse for me than any cold shower; then she sent the girl away without even giving her a little something, because—she said—for that day, charity was done. (And, truth be told, Marta performs acts of charity every day; we should take note that she gives a little change to the first pauper she comes across and, with that, once she has said "Commend me to the holy souls of Purgatory," she's at peace with her conscience, and wants to hear no more about it.)

All the while, I’m thinking to myself: that girl, if she's not already lost, surely it will happen soon. Yes, but what should it matter to me? Now I have become sane, and I mustn't think about these things anymore, not even for a moment. “Think of myself!”—this is my new motto. It took a lot of effort to persuade me to put in her name all the deeds of this my new life, let's call it that. But just as God wills, without doing anything... That's enough. To give you an example, if now I should pause beneath the window of a house where I know there are people crying, I'm immediately obliged to seek in that window my own lost, meager reflection, which, leaning out, is plainly obliged to shout to me from up there, lowering its head a little and pointing an index finger to its chest: “And me?” Just like that.

Always: “And me?” at every opportunity. Which here is the basis of true wisdom.

When I was mad, on the other hand...

II. Basis of Morality

When I was mad, I didn't feel right in myself; which is like saying: I wasn't at home in myself.

Indeed, I had become an establishment open to everyone. And if I slapped myself a bit on the forehead, I heard there were still people lodging in there: poor people who needed my help; and many, many other tenants who I held equally dear; nor can we say that these legs and hands were ever  mine as much as they were at the service of the unhappy ones who were inside me, and sent me here and there, in constant attention to their troubles.[1]

I wasn't, in conscience, able to say I, without an echo immediately repeating back to me: I, I, I... from many others, almost as if I had a chirping flock of sparrows inside me. So this meant that if, let's say, I was hungry and I said so to myself, many and many more repeated within me on their own account: I'm hungry, I'm hungry, I'm hungry... for whom it was necessary to provide, and I always had the same regret of not being able to take care of everyone. In short, I conceived of myself as being in a mutual aid society with the universe; but since at that time I didn't need anyone, it was only “mutual” for the others.[2]

Meanwhile, the fine thing was that I believed I was reasoning with my madness; in fact, if I must tell the whole truth without feeling ashamed, I had even reached the point of drawing up the outline for a sui generis treatise, that I intended to set down in writing with the title: Basis of Morality. [3]

Here in this drawer I have my notes for this treatise, and every now and then, in the evening (while Marta is taking her usual nap after dinner), I pull them out and read them over slowly, furtively, with a certain enjoyment and, also, I confess, a certain amazement, because it's undeniable that I was reasoning quite well, back when I was mad.

I should truly laugh at this; but perhaps I'm unable to on account of an entirely particular reason. Those arguments were for the most part aimed at convincing that wretch, who was my first wife, of whom I'll speak shortly, of the most evident proof of the aforementioned fits of madness back in those times.

From these notes I argue that, in my conception, the treatise on the Basis of Morality should consist of dialogues between myself and that first wife of mine, or maybe of apologues. For instance, one notebook is titled The Timid Young Man, and in it I was certainly referring to that good youth, son of a country merchant I did business with, who was sent by his father to visit me in town, and that wretched woman had invited him to luncheon with us in order to have some fun at his expense.

I transcribe from the little notebook:

Tell me, o Mirina. Oh, what are those eyes of yours? Don't you see this poor young man has realized your intention to make fun of him? You consider him foolish but instead he's only shy; so shy he doesn't know how to extract himself from the ridicule to which you subject him, no matter how much he suffers from it inwardly. If the young man's suffering, o Mirina, wasn't just an outward sign for you to laugh at, if you weren't aware only of your grim pleasure but also, at the same time, of his pain, isn't it clear to you that you'd stop making him suffer, because your pleasure would be disturbed and destroyed by the awareness of another's pain? You act, Mirina, without full sensibility of your action, whose effect you only feel within yourself.

Just like that. And for a madman, see, it's not so shabby. What was bad was that I didn't understand it's one thing to reason, it's another to live. And aren't perhaps half, or almost half, of those wretches kept locked up in clinics, people who wanted to live according to how we reason in the abstract? I could cite endless proof, endless examples here, if not for the fact that every sane man today recognizes plenty of things carried out in life, or that are said, and certain customs and certain habits to be quite unreasonable, making the one who persists in reasoning the mad one.

Such was I, deep down; such did I demonstrate myself to be in my treatise. I wouldn't have been aware of it, if Marta hadn't loaned me her spectacles.[4]

Out of curiosity, meanwhile, those who are dissatisfied with God because he is based on a feeling that makes no allowance for reason, could see how I reasoned about Him in my treatise. Except that, now I admit, it would be a difficult and rather unfeasible God for sane people, because anyone wanting to know him would have to treat others the way I once did, that is to say as a madman: with equal awareness of themself and others, because theirs are consciences like our own. Anyone who might really do this, and attribute to other consciences a reality identical to their own, would necessarily hold the idea of a reality shared by all, of a truth and also of an existence that goes beyond us: God.[5]

But that doesn't hold for sane people, I repeat.

Meanwhile, it's curious to note, that while I (following our old habit of reading a good book before bedtime) was reading, for example, I fioretti by Saint Francis,[6] Marta interrupts me from time to time, exclaiming with reverence and full of admiration:

“What a saint! What a saint!”[7]

Just like that.

It may be the devil who tempted me, but I lower the book to my knees and sit looking at her, to see if she is being serious, saying this right in front of me. To be logical, come on, Saint Francis shouldn't be a sane man, or else I now...

But, alright, I assure myself that the sane people must be logical up to a certain point.

Let's go back to when I was mad.

As evening fell in the countryside, when I would catch the far off sound of bagpipes opening the march of the crowds of reapers returning to the village with wagons filled with the harvest, it would seem to me that the air between myself and the things around me was becoming more and more intimate; and that I was seeing beyond natural vision. My soul, intent upon and fascinated by that holy intimacy with things, would sink to the edges of my senses and perceive the slightest movement, the slightest sound. And a great, stunned silence would be within me, so that a nearby fluttering of wings would cause me to start and a far-off chirp would almost give me a jolt of joy because I felt happy for the little birds, who in that season weren't suffering from cold and found plenty to eat around the countryside; happy, as if my breath warmed them and I myself were their food.

I would enter into the life of plants, too, and little by little, from the pebble to the blade of grass, I was rising, gathering and feeling inside myself the life of everything, until it seemed I was almost becoming the world, that the trees were my limbs, the earth was my body, the rivers my veins, and the air my soul; and I would go on like this for a while, ecstatic and permeated by this divine vision.

Once it vanished, I remained breathless, as if I had truly welcomed the life of the world into my frail chest.

I would sit at the base of a tree, and then it was that the spirit of my madness would begin suggesting the queerest ideas to me: that humanity needed me, my exhorting word—a voice of example, a word of action. At a certain point I would realize on my own that I was hallucinating, and so I would say to myself, “Let's go back, let's go back inside our conscience.” But I would go back inside not to see me, but to see the others inside me as they saw themselves, to sense them inside me as they sensed themselves, and to treat them as they wanted themselves to be treated.[8]

Now then, imagining and reflecting on other beings like this with a reality equal to my own, in the inner mirror of my conscience, and by the same means also on the Being in his unity, wasn't it natural that an egoistic action, that is an action in which the part aspires to replace and subordinate the whole, would appear completely unreasonable to me?

Alas, yes. But as I tiptoed across my lands, bent over to make sure I wasn't crushing some wildflower or some insect, whose tenuous life of a single day I was living inside me, the others stole the land from me, they stole the houses; they stripped me of everything altogether.

And now, here I am: ecce homo![9]

III. Mirina

The blessed candle, the candle of “the good death” that holy woman had brought back from the mother church of her small hometown, was now performing its function.

For so many years she had safeguarded it for herself in the back of the wardrobe; and now it burned atop a long, leaden candlestick and seemed almost to stand watch with the unassuming and affectionate memories of the distant town, melting into tears running down its stem, placed behind the head of the dead woman already laid on the floor of the still open coffin, in the spot that had earlier been occupied by the bed. Whenever I recall my first wife, this funereal vision springs to mind with exceptional clarity. The holy woman laid out in that coffin is Amalia Sanni, the older sister and, I should like to say, almost mother to Mirina. I can still see the unassuming room and, besides the blessed candle, two other, smaller candles at the foot of the coffin, burning down sooner, sputtering from time to time.

I remain seated at the window and, as if stunned more than pained by the unexpected tragedy, I watch the relatives and friends who have gathered for that dead woman: bright, respectable people, I wouldn't go so far as to deny it,  but who were too zealous in impressing upon me the strong dislike they felt towards me. Doubtless they were right, but in this way they weren't helping me recover my sanity, on the contrary, their looks gave me reason to feel genuine sorrow for them.

I loved Amalia Sanni like a sister. I now recognize a sole defect in her, here it is: her soul was in every way in harmony with my own in thinking about life. I wouldn't say, however, that she was mad; rather, at the most, I'd say Amalia Sanni wasn't in her right mind, rather like Saint Francis. Because there is no middle ground: we're either saints, or we're madmen.Both of us had tried to reawaken Mirina's soul with care, without spoiling the fresh nature of her unhinged and almost violent vitality, without mortifying that tiny, doll-like body of hers, full of such vivacious graces. We were trying to teach a butterfly—not to close its wings and cease flying, but rather to not settle on certain poisonous flowers. Without understanding that for the butterfly, what seemed poisonous to us was its very food.

Enough: I don't want to go on here about my unhappy conjugal existence with Mirina. I will only say that she detested in me what she admired in her sister. And it now seems to me to be the most natural reaction.

All of a sudden, one of my wife's cousins, huffing, entered the mortuary chamber, I no longer remember her name: stout, dwarfish, with a large pair of round eyeglasses that enlarged her eyes in a frightful way, poor thing. She had gone outdoors to gather here and there as many flowers as she could from the villa's surroundings and now she was coming to scatter them over the dead woman. In her mussed-up hair she wore the wind that was shrieking outside.

Kind and merciful that gesture was: I recognize it now; but back then... I was remembering that, a few days earlier, Amalia, upon seeing Mirina come back to the little villa with a large bunch of flowers, had exclaimed in an afflicted tone:

“What a shame! Why?”

Indeed, in her state of holiness, she believed those wildflowers do not bloom for people, but are like the laughter of the earth expressing its gratitude to the sun for the warmth it provides. Picking those flowers was, to her, a profanation. Being mad, I confess that I was overcome by the sight of the dead woman covered with those flowers. I said nothing. I went out.

I still remember the impression made on me that night by the sudden spectacle of almost all nature in flight before the howling vehemence of the wind. Dashed to bits and fleeing across the sky, in desperate fury, were endless hosts of clouds, and they seemed to drag the moon along with them, pale from bewilderment; the trees twisted around, rustling, creaking, convulsing without respite, as if they were to uproot themselves and flee over there, and over there, where the wind carried the clouds to a stormy meeting.

My soul, which upon leaving the small villa was clenched in mourning for the dead, all of a sudden opened up, as if mourning had thrown itself wide before that night: more immense sadness, it seemed to me, was in that mysterious sky, in those dashed and dragged clouds; more ancient pain could be found in the infuriated and shrieking air in the wake of their flight; and, if the mute trees were tossing like that, an unknown spasm must certainly have been inside them, too. Suddenly there was a sob, almost a bubble of frightful light in that sea of darkness: an owl's scream in the valley below; and, far-off, cries of terror: the crickets that were chirping over there, towards the hill.

Hit full force by the wind, I made my way through the trees. At a certain point, I don't know why, I found myself looking towards the small villa, now seen from the other side. After looking at it for a bit, I suddenly leaned forward to make out in the darkness if what I seemed to see was true, there, near the low window of the room where Mirina had withdrawn to mourn her sister: it moved about like a shadow. Might that shadow have been in my eyes? I rubbed them so hard that afterwards, for a moment, I was unable to make out anything anymore, almost as if denser shade had fallen around me, preventing me not from seeing but from believing that which it seemed I had seen. A shadow that gestured? The shadow of a tree blown by the wind?

That's how far my mind was from the suspicion that my wife was betraying me. 

I truly don’t believe that I presume too much in thinking that, on a night like that one, such a suspicion would have been far from anyone's mind, and that perhaps anyone—like me when I realized that shadow was a man in flesh and blood—would have thought he was a thief by night and, like me, would have stealthily run to get a gun to frighten him away, even if only firing it into the air.

Except for the fact that, when I discovered what kind of thief he was, I didn't shoot him, nor did I fire into the air.

Crouching there, behind the corner of the farmhouse, very close to the first window where they were speaking to each other, beset by constant shivers sharp as razor blades along my back, I forced myself to hear what they were saying. I could only hear my wife, terrified by this man's incredible audacity. She was urging him to go away. He was also speaking, but so low and hurried that, not only could I not understand his words, but I couldn't yet recognize him from the sound of his voice.

“Get out of here, get out of here,” she was insisting. And between her tears she added other words that further petrified me. I suddenly perceived everything! He had come on that stormy night to ask news of the sick woman. And she said to him, “We killed her ourselves.” Ah, so Amalia had known, had discovered the betrayal before I had?

“What fault? What fault had she? No!” he said loudly, agitated all of a sudden.

Vardi! Him, Cesare Vardi, my neighbor! I recognized him, I could see him in his voice: stocky and solid, almost nourished with earth, sun, and clean air. I heard, immediately afterwards, the shutters close violently, as if the wind had helped her hands; I heard him move away. And I didn't move from the position I had set myself in; with my hearing, holding my breath, I followed his footsteps, much slower than my heartbeats. Then I arose, overcome by the initial consternation, and, then, what I had seen and heard almost seemed not to be true anymore.

“Is it possible? Can it be possible?” I said to myself, as I wandered again through the countryside, among the trees, as if intoxicated. From my throat came a continuous low moan, that was mixed up with the violent rustling of the leaves, as if my body, wounded, was hurting on its own account, while my soul, overcome, stunned, paid it no heed.[10]

“Is it possible?”

I finally understood that moan that was coming from me, and, choking, I stopped and gripped my upper arms strongly, first with one hand and then with the other, crossing my arms over my chest, almost as if to restrain myself, and I sat on the ground. Then it was I burst into desperate sobbing; I cried and cried; then, worn out, somewhat relieved, I began to speak encouraging words to myself.

But I'll only recount what I did, after having thought a long time. That will be best. By now many years have passed; to be moved again over this old tragedy of mine is not, I fear, worthy of a sane man; even more so since, it seems, or rather it is certain, that I behaved very badly indeed.

So, having stood up from the ground, I set about wandering once more. All of a sudden I felt almost forced to hide myself again, and I crouched down behind the hedge that divided my field from his. Vardi was returning slowly to his house. As he passed by me, hidden by the hedge, I heard him sighing deeply in the night. That sigh brought him so close to me, that I almost felt disgust. Ah, for that sigh alone I was on the verge of killing him. I could have—had I only slightly raised the gun, without bothering to take aim, that's how close he passed. I let him go by.

Having rushed back to the small villa, I found that the relatives had withdrawn from the dead woman's room, and that only two servants had remained to keep watch there. I relieved them of their sad task, saying that I would stand watch myself. I stayed for a while contemplating my sister-in-law, who seemed to be more peaceful, more serene, as if, having died within the shadow of the guilt of harboring the terrible secret, now she had emerged from it, since everything had been revealed to me. So then I entered Mirina's room.

I found her crying. As soon as she saw me, her expression changed .

“Don't be afraid,” I said to her, “Come with me.”

“Where?”

“With me. You won't have any more regrets.”

“What does that mean?”

“I want to do, not to say. And only to do what you want. Come on then. I'll show you.”

I took her by the hand; I pulled her along. Trembling, shaking, she let herself be pulled into the dead woman's room. I pointed at her sister.

“You see?” I said to her. “Now she forgives you. And you can repeat to me that you killed her.”

“Me?”

“Yes, like you said just a little while ago from the window to him. Silence, don't shout! I won't do anything to you. You will go away this very moment from this house. Don't cry! It's your prison. I want to set you free.”

She fell to her knees, her face to the ground, begging forgiveness, mercy. I helped her up immediately, telling her to keep quiet; I led her out of the room.

“Where? Where?” she asked in anguish.

“Where you like; don't fear. And if you want to be punished, it will be your punishment; and if you are still able to enjoy life, you'll enjoy it fully. I'm setting you free! I'm setting you free!”

I still had the gun on my shoulder. Ah, how she looked at it there, suspecting quite reasonably that with my kind words I wanted to entice her outside! I realized that; I smiled bitterly. And I hurried to put the weapon down in a corner of the room.

“I don't want to hurt you, no. What duty is it of yours to love me…. by force?”

“Where are you sending me?”

“To him, he's waiting for you.”

Upon entering a home, I used to think then, we have to make do with the chair that is offered us by the host, without stopping to think whether we might have made a better looking or larger chair from the tree from which the chair was made, in accordance with our taste or our standing. For Mirina, the chairs of my house were too high. Whenever she sat on them, her legs were dangling, and she wanted to feel the ground beneath her feet.

But I promised to recount only what I did. Well: let this brief taste of madness pass. How much quicker it would have been to fire off a gunshot... Bah!

Taking her by the hand outdoors, I talked to her as we went. I don't rightly know what I said to her; I know that, at a certain point, she twisted her wrist out of my hand and escaped, running, running, away between the trees, as if blown by the wind. I was perplexed, surprised by that sudden flight: it had seemed that she had seemed to follow me in such a docile manner... I called out like a blind man:

“Mirina! Mirina!”

She had disappeared into the shadows, between the trees. I wandered around, searching, for a long time, in vain. Dawn broke, I still searched, until all doubt was won over by the certainty that she'd gone alone to seek refuge there, where I, without any violence, had wanted to lead her.

I looked at the sky crossed by a few scant striations, which were like the surviving traces of the clouds' hasty retreat in the night, and I felt dazed in the midst of a new, unexpected silence, with the vague impression that something had gone missing from all around, from the ground. Ah yes, that's what it was: the wind. The wind had died down. The trees were unmoving in the damp, squalid light of that dawn.

There was such tiredness in that stupefied immobility! I, too, was worn out, and I settled down to sit on the ground. I looked at the leaves of the closest trees and felt that, if in that moment the slightest breath of air had come to stir them, they might perhaps have felt the same pain I would have felt, if someone had come to shake my hand.

I suddenly remembered that the dead woman was alone in the small villa: that the relatives were there who, perhaps at that hour, were waking up and asking about me and my wife. I leapt to my feet and dashed off.

I find it useless to lay out what followed to sane people. Those good relatives all rose up upon hearing my words, my explanations; they declared me mad, and, while everyone spoke loudly at once, even that stout cousin, dwarfish, with her round spectacles, managed to find the courage during the general uproar to scream in my face, fists clenched:

“Imbecile!”

She was right, poor woman.

They hurried along the process of moving the dead woman to the church in the next village, and then they left me alone.

Two years later, I see myself travelling. Vardi has abandoned Mirina who, having been spared from destitution, vice, and desperation, now lives in a relative's house. She is, however, under the sway of a terrible illness and is about to die. With my forgiveness, with peace, I hoped, I dreamed, to lighten the last days of her life, taking her back to our countryside. I present myself to her in that grubby room; I say:

“Do you understand me now?”

“No!” she replies, withdrawing her hand that I want to caress and regarding me hatefully.

And she too, poor woman, was right.

IV. School of Wisdom

In order to perform any profession well one also needs, as everyone knows, a certain large measure of means, which allows one to wait for the finest opportunities, without having to throw oneself at the first ones that come along, like dogs after a bone—which is the fate awaiting anyone who finds themselves in financial straits and who, in order to get through today, must impoverish their tomorrow, as well as themselves, and their profession.

Now, this also holds true for the profession of the thief.

A poor thief, who must live from day to day, will always end up badly. A thief who isn't in such poor circumstances on the other hand, and who can and knows how to bide his time, to prepare his methods, will arrive in high and very honorable places, with everyone's approval and satisfaction.

Let us then be cautious, for pity's sake, in attributing the merit of wisdom to the thieves in my house.[11]

All those who exercised their profession upon my conspicuous wealth do not merit sane people's praise. They could have stolen politely and handily, with care and prudence, and created for themselves an honorable and entirely respectable position. Instead, without any real need, they rushed to steal, and, naturally, they stole badly. By reducing me to poverty in a few years, they eliminated the possibility of living peacefully behind my back. And, in fact, there soon began for them so many problems they never had before; and I know, and am sorry about it, that one in particular wound up in a very bad way.

Marta, my wife, agrees with me on this judgment; she's the only one to observe that when a rather honest poor man finds himself surrounded by so many greedy thieves in administering the wealth of a rich imbecile or mad man (that would be me), the tactic of parsimony during theft is no longer a wise course; the discreet, peaceful, daily theft is no longer a sign of prudence, but of stupidity and faint heartedness. And this was precisely the case of Santi Bensai, my secretary, and my dear Marta's first husband.

Poor Santi (to whom I owe my not being reduced to begging) knew my wealth and wisely estimated that it could amply serve myself and as many of those, like himself, who would be content to rake it off discreetly, conveniently, without creating any too obvious damage. If perhaps he did not neglect to counsel his colleagues, in their common interest, towards moderation, he certainly wasn't listened to; he made enemies; and he suffered not a little, poor man. The others continued to carry off everything in bales and barrows, while he went on like a workaday ant. And, finally, when I was left as destitute as holy Job, poor Santi was a sight to see, as he was more, but a great deal more, afflicted than me. He had scraped together what he needed to live within his means, and he knew no rest thinking of those others who hadn't even deigned to leave me in his same situation.

“Executioners!” he would exclaim, he who had noiselessly extracted my blood, barely a drop at a time, with a pin.

And more than once, upon seeing me a bit too pale, he wanted to drag me by force to his house to lunch together; and he didn't eat, so strong was the bile that made him furious against those others.

I kept my peace and listened to Marta who, from that time on, began schooling me in wisdom. Against her husband she defended my executioners.

“Let's be level-headed!” she said, “What right have we to expect others to take care of us, when we constantly show we take no care of ourselves? The belongings of Signor Fausto became everyone’s belongings, and each one helped himself. It's not a matter of the thief’s thievery as much as—Signor Bandini will forgive me—imbecility on the part of the man who lets himself be robbed.”

And several other times she would say, as if quite bothered:

“Be quiet, will you, Santi! Imitate Signor Bandini who at least stays quiet because he well knows, now, that he cannot complain of anyone else. Indeed, if he always thought of others, even though it was no business of his, why does he wonder that these others, likewise, have only thought of themselves? He provided the example, and the others followed his lead. In my opinion, Signor Bandini’s greatest thief has been himself.

“And so, to prison?” I would ask her, smiling.

“To prison, no. But to some other hospice, yes.”

Santi rebelled at this. The discussion became heated and, in vain, I would try to keep the peace by stating that, when all was said and done, those types hadn't done their worst to me, who in any case knew how to adapt myself to living in any conditions, but to the poor people who required my help.

“So it's you then,” Marta would reply, “who did a bad turn not only to yourself but also to others. Don't you agree? Not thinking of yourself, you didn't think about the others, either. A double evil! And so, doesn't it follow that all those who only think about themselves, and make their way without having to rely on anyone, by this very attitude they show they're thinking of others? What will you do now? You need the others, now. And do you think it will really benefit them to have to show you gratitude?”

“Oh, what's that coming out of your mouth, you gossip?” At her words, Santi would jump, fearing I might read in them a rebuke  for the very limited help he lent to me with all his heart.

Marta, calmly, pitying him with her gaze, would answer:

“I'm not talking about you. What's it to you, dear Santi, you who are a poor, upstanding man?”

And truly! If I had let him follow his affection and his consideration, I would have reduced myself to living with him night and day. He didn't want to leave my side even for a moment, and he asked me to please, kindly accept his dutiful services. Poor Santi! But, in my poverty, the fumes of insanity hadn't completely evaporated. I didn't want to be a weight to any of my old benefactors, and with compassionate grace, I would take my rags and my wretchedness out for a walk. Meantime, I tried to find any kind of job, even manual labor, that would allow me to satisfy my few needs.

But not even this way of doing things met my schoolteacher's approval.

“Work?” she would say. “That's a fine plan! You weren't born for this, and now, without meaning to, you'll take away the place of some poor man who may have found his feet, thanks to the employment you're seeking.”

So, she wanted me dead then, my good friend? That reasoning of hers struck me and, not wanting to take away anyone's work, I went far away, to seek shelter from a family of farmers who were former employees of mine for whom, in exchange, I stood watch over the charcoal pit in the woods at night, with the excuse that I couldn’t sleep. There, a few months later, news reached me that poor Santi Bensai had dropped dead. I mourned him like a brother! Around one year later the widow sent someone to look for me. I had fallen into such wretchedness that I absolutely refused to go to her.

Now, Marta doesn't wish to claim the merit of having saved me; but, if it's true that the good Santi left in his will a strong recommendation for me to his wife, it's also true that she might not have taken it into account.

“No, no,” she repeats to me, “thank Santi, the good soul, who at least had the farsightedness to set aside this little money that used to be yours, for our old age. You see? What you didn't know how to do, he did for you. It's a shame he wasn't more courageous, poor man!”

And so now I, being sane, enjoy the rare fruits of the sanest of virtues: the foresight of one of my poor, grateful, and humanly decent thieves.