This story by Miguel De Unamuno highlights the danger of defying societal expectations in culturally backward, late 1800s Spain. When a highly respected physician begins to publish increasingly bizarre satirical short stories as a pastime, his patients express concern over his ability to treat them. Despite assurances from another doctor, they desert his practice and question his sanity. Such talk eventually leads to him entering an asylum where he spends the rest of his life a confused, broken man. Themes include individualism, intellectual complacency (of the Spanish masses), duality (logic and practicality vs. fantasy and satire), the nature of madness.