The Blind Man
Why is the first sunshine so delightful? Why does the light falling upon the earth fill us so with the happiness of living? The sky is all blue, the country all green, the houses all white; and our charmed eyes drink in these living colours, wherewith they fashion joy for our souls. And we feel impulsive desires to dance, to run, to sing, a happy lightness of the spirit, a kind of broadened, liberated tenderness; we feel as if we would like to embrace the sun.
The blind men in the doorways, impassive in their eternal darkness, remain calm as ever in the midst of this new gaiety of life and, incomprehending, they keep on quieting their dogs who long to gambol.
When they go home, at the end of the day, on the arm of a young brother or little sister, if the child says: “It has been a lovely day!” they will reply: “Yes, I knew very well it was a fine day, Loulou would not keep still.”
I knew one of these men, whose life was one of the most cruel martyrdoms that can be dreamt of.
He was a peasant, the son of a Norman farmer. As long as his father and mother were alive, fairly good care was taken of him; he hardly suffered except from his horrible infirmity; but as soon as the old people were gone, his appalling existence began. Taken in by a sister, he was treated by everyone on the farm as a beggar who ate the bread of others. At every meal his food was grudged him; he was called sluggard and booby; and although his brother-in-law had got possession of his share of the inheritance, his broth was given him with reluctance, and only in just sufficient quantity to keep him from death.
His face was very pale, and his two eyes were large and white like sealing-wafers; he remained impassive under all insults, so walled up in himself that no one knew whether he felt them. And he had never known any affection, his mother having always been a trifle harsh with him, loving him very little; for in the country the useless are nuisances, and peasants would gladly copy the fowls, that kill off the weakly among themselves.
As soon as his soup was swallowed, he would go and sit before the door in summer, beside the fire in winter, and would not move till evening. He made no gesture, no movement; only his eyelids, shaken by a kind of nervous affliction, would occasionally fall over the white spots of his eyes. Had he a spirit, a mind, a clear consciousness of his life? No one wondered.
For a few years things went on like this. But his inability to do anything, as much as his imperturbability, ended by exasperating his relations, and he became a scapegoat, a sort of buffoon-martyr, a kind of prey sacrificed to the natural ferocity and savage merriment of the brutes around him.
They thought of all the cruel jests which his blindness inspired. And, in order to pay themselves for what he ate, they turned his meals into hours of pleasure for the neighbours and of torture for the helpless wretch.
The peasants of the neighbouring houses came to this entertainment; stories of it ran from door to door, and the farm kitchen was full every day. Sometimes a cat or a dog was put on the table, in front of the plate from which he was beginning to take his soup. Instinctively the animal would realise the man’s infirmity and would very softly draw near, eating without a sound, lapping it up delicately; and when a rather noisy splashing of the tongue had aroused the poor wretch’s attention, it would prudently draw away to avoid the random blow from the spoon that followed.
Then there was much laughter, nudging, and stamping from the spectators crowded along the walls. And without saying a
