If you are desirous of obtaining a great name, of becoming the founder of a sect or establishment, be completely mad; but be sure that your madness corresponds with the turn and temper of your age. Have in your madness reason enough to guide your extravagances; and forget not to be excessively opinionated and obstinate. It is certainly possible that you may get hanged; but if you escape hanging, you will have altars erected to you.

In real truth, was there ever a fitter subject for the Petites-Maisons, or Bedlam, than Ignatius, or St. Inigo the Biscayan, for that was his true name? His head became deranged in consequence of his reading the “Golden Legend”; as Don Quixote’s was, afterwards, by reading the romances of chivalry. Our Biscayan hero, in the first place, dubs himself a knight of the Holy Virgin, and performs the Watch of Arms in honor of his lady. The virgin appears to him and accepts his services; she often repeats her visit, and introduces to him her son. The devil, who watches his opportunity, and clearly foresees the injury he must in the course of time suffer from the Jesuits, comes and makes a tremendous noise in the house, and breaks all the windows; the Biscayan drives him away with the sign of the cross; and the devil flies through the wall, leaving in it a large opening, which was shown to the curious fifty years after the happy event.

His family, seeing the very disordered state of his mind, is desirous of his being confined and put under a course of regimen and medicine. He extricates himself from his family as easily as he did from the devil, and escapes without knowing where to go. He meets with a Moor, and disputes with him about the immaculate conception. The Moor, who takes him exactly for what he is, quits him as speedily as possible. The Biscayan hesitates whether he shall kill the Moor or pray to God for his conversion; he leaves the decision to his horse, and the animal, rather wiser than its master, takes the road leading to the stable.

Our hero, after this adventure, undertakes a pilgrimage to Bethlehem, begging his bread on the way: his madness increases as he proceeds; the Dominicans take pity on him at Manrosa, and keep him in their establishment for some days, and then dismiss him uncured.

He embarks at Barcelona, and goes to Venice; he returns to Barcelona, still travelling as a mendicant, always experiencing trances and ecstacies, and frequently visited by the Holy Virgin and Jesus Christ.

At length, he was given to understand that, in order to go to the Holy Land with any fair view of converting the Turks, the Christians of the Greek church, the Armenians, and the Jews, it was necessary to begin with a little study of theology. Our hero desires nothing better; but, to become a theologian, it was requisite to know something of grammar and a little Latin; this gives him no embarrassment whatever: he goes to college at the age of thirty-three; he is there laughed at, and learns nothing.

He was almost broken-hearted at the idea of not being able to go ............