A Fasting Man Goes Mad

Feilding Star, Volume XIV, Issue 20, 4 August 1892, Page 4

A Fasting Man Goes Mad

A lesson has feeen taught, says a Paris correspondent, to all professional fasting men and women by the fate of Succi, the Milanese .. emulator oi the American;, Dr. Tanner, and who a few years ago astonished Parisians by his long Lents- The other evening the attention of the police was called to the antics of a well-dressed man who was fencing with a phantom on the boulevards outside the Cale" Riche. The imaginary duellist was heard to say as he plunged his stick in the air before him, " Now I've got him ! He's dead ! I am the only reigning monarch.' 1 On being taken by the police to the Fnubourg Montmartre Station the unknown lunatic declared that he was " Cffisar Napoleon, Entjßfor of the French." At the depdt, however, the man gave his address in the. Rue Victor' Masse, where it was discovered that he was Giovanni Succi. Two Englishmen, who are said, to have described themselver as " apprentice fasting men," lodged in the same place as Succi, who, it appears,- has ior some time past shown many signs of mental aberration. On Friday morning he went to the Elysse in order to try to see the President of the Republic and to tell him that he wps a usurper. Succi had also been heard shrieking out on the Boulevards that he was being pursued by priests. The police commissary who tooK over the victim of starvation, found in his pockets a considerable sum of money in British bank-notes. The poor lunatic was afterwards conveyed to the Sainte Anne Asylum, and a report on his case transmitted to the Italian Embassy.