In order to test Martinengo's susceptibility to suggestion, my father told him that his cell was a room in the "Albergo del Sole," the name of a hotel in his native town. At first the idea amused him, but after a few days he began to mention it to other persons and at last he firmly believed in it. A few months later, he was transferred in a state of paralysis to the asylum, and there he was fond of boasting of the "Albergo del Sole" where he had been staying a few months before, and where they had treated him to choice dishes, etc.
We now come to Fissore, the accuser of the other three. Investigation of his origin showed that a male cousin had died raving mad, a female cousin had died in an asylum, a great-uncle on the maternal side had been crazy and had committed suicide; another cousin was weak-minded and subject to fits; another, a deaf-mute, had died in an asylum; another great-uncle was a drunkard and a loafer; one sister was an idiot, the other had run away from home, and a brother had been convicted several times.
Giuseppe Fissore had suffered from somnambulism and _pavor nocturnus_ (fear of darkness) when quite a child; when a little older, he used to get up in the night, walk about and try to throw himself out of the window. At school he shunned the company of other boys and grew violently angry when called by his name. When ten years old, he was bitten by a mad dog and while being tended in Turin by the wife of an inn-keeper, had an epileptic seizure. At thirteen, he was seized by another fit, and in falling broke his arm. His restless and capricious character led him to change his occupation a great many times; he became, in turn, baker, carpenter, forester, and farm-labourer. He appeared to have little affection for his mother and still less for his father, with whom he had come to blows on one occasion. At the age of twenty, in a quarrel with some companions, one of them struck him with a sickle and fractured his skull. He had been convicted several times of theft, assault, etc.
He manifested only a few physical anomalies,--exaggerated facial asymmetry, due to the disproportionate development of the left side of his skull, Carrara's lines in the palm of his hands, and a scar resulting from the fracture of his skull; but the convulsions, the _pavor nocturnus_, the two fits, and other characteristics showed him to be an epileptic and an abnormal individual, and explained how he could have accomplished a murder single-handed, which was moreover rendered more easy by the fact that the victim had been drinking heavily. Nor was the crime without a motive, since the murdered man had been robbed of a large sum of money. The total lack of moral sense that distinguished Fissore explains why he should have sought to implicate three persons who had never wronged him for the pleasure of harming and enjoying the sufferings of others. In fact, during his trial he made many false accusations against the police merely for the sake of lying, which is characteristic of degenerates.