Dr.
Seward's Diary1 July His [Renfield's] spiders are now becoming as
great a nuisance as his flies, and today I told him that he must get rid of them. He
looked very sad at this, so I said that he must some of them, at all events. He
cheerfully acquiesced in this, and I gave him the same time as before for reduction. He
disgusted me much while with him, for when a horrid blowfly, bloated with some
carrion food, buzzed into the room, he caught it, held it exultantly for a few
moments between his finger and thumb, and before I knew what he was going to do,
put it in his mouth and ate it. I scolded him for it, but he argued quietly
that it was very good and very wholesome, that it was life, strong life, and gave
life to him. This gave me an idea, or the rudiment of one. I must watch how he
gets rid of his spiders. He has evidently some deep problem in his mind,
for he keeps a little notebook in which he is always jotting down something. Whole
pages of it are filled with masses of figures, generally single numbers added
up in batches, and then the totals added in batches again, as though he were focussing
some account, as the auditors put it. |
