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Whilst Hullin, at the Head of the mountaineers, was taking his measures for the defence of his country, the fool Yegof -- that being deprived of the blessing of self-consciousness, that unhappy creature with his tin crown, that sad spectacle of humanity shorn of its noblest, greatest, most vital attribute, intelligence -- the fool Yegof, his breast exposed to the cutting wind, his feet bare, insensible to cold, like the reptile in his icy prison, was wandering from mountain to mountain, in the midst of the snows of winter.
Whence comes it that the madman is able to resist the sharpest severity of the atmosphere, while an intelligent being would succumb to it? Does it arise from a more powerful concentration of life, a more rapid circulation of the blood, a state of perpetual fever? Or is it the effect of the over-excitement of the senses, or any other unknown cause?