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A French soldier who admired Germans.

Case 48. (Lautier, 1915.)

A man with the extraordinary first name of Agapithe (Laurent insists on the frequency of strange first names in degenerate families) came from Val-de-Grâce to Villejuif June 5, 1916, with the diagnosis of mental weakness, interpretative ideas of persecution, mental excitement, recrimination, logorrhoea, and a tendency to revengeful reactions.

On arrival the patient said he must be in an insane asylum because he heard spiritiques talking together. He, however, was “not insane” and began expounding his plans for revenge with the words “Kill,” “Cut-throat.”

This man had been placed in the auxiliary service by the Council, called to the colors December 13, 1914, and finally sent to the front in May, 1915. In July he was made prisoner in a brush. He said, “I cried out, ‘Comrades, what difference does it make to me whether I am German or French? My officers are imbeciles that drink the blood of us unlucky ones!’ ” He was interned in some camp whose name he could not exactly give and reported that the Germans were very gentle with him, that his real enemies were the French, for the French were against him night and day. “As a matter of fact, among Germans the French are nothing but cochons malades. The Germans are fine types.”

He was repatriated in May, 1916. He kept making verbose and neologistic eulogia of the Germans. He had been a farm boy in Brittany, where he had had headaches. He had been at Quimper Asylum in 1910. In fact, he said his parents had tried to poison him and to have him assassinated; they had charged him with setting fire to their house. His mother was an imbecile, he said, who believed she was the Queen of France. His recriminations did not stop short of himself. He had been accused of kissing a girl and stealing apples; as a matter of fact he knew what to do with girls.

He had a coarse face and a number of stigmata besides his name Agapithe. He was kept at Villejuif as an imbecile.