The Extraordinary Confessions of Diana Please

Dr. Peel's Asylum was known generically as "The House," perhaps in cynical allusion to its licensed irresponsibility to any laws but its own. It was conceived on the principle of an eel-pot -- the easiest thing to slip, or be driven, into; the hardest to escape from. It was not so much an asylum as an oubliette; never so much a house of correction as of annihilation. There, in addition to the constitutionally weak-minded, troublesome heirs, irreclaimable prodigals, jealous wives, importunate creditors, distinguished blackmailers, chance recipients of deadly secrets -- all such, in fact, as threatened the peace of that grand seigniory which has a prescriptive monopoly in it -- could be immured by _lettre de cachet_ (it amounted to nothing less) from any accommodating physician, and afterwards "treated," or disposed of, by private contract. Its methods were delicate, tasteful, and exceedingly sure.

With rib-breaking, starvation, strait-waistcoats, all the vulgar apparatus of the ordinary _médecin de fous_, it had no commerce. Where the removal of undesirables was in question, it rather killed with kindness; suffocated, like Heliogabalus, with roses; persuaded to the happy despatch with a silken cord. It drove its poor Judases to suicide by putting by, as useless, their moral reparations, and took care to have at hand the seductive means. If one escaped -- a rare occurrence -- it possessed a kennel of highly trained bloodhounds, whose belling warned the dark nights with menace. It asked no questions, and expected to be asked none. Its formula was a hint and a cheque.