She put out her hand, which he took mechanically,
and then she jumped out on to the platform among her
friends, who were waiting for her.
The baron hastily shut the carriage door, for he was
too much disturbed to say a word or come to any determination.
He heard his wife’s voice and their merry laughter
as they went away.
He never saw her again, nor did he ever discover whether
she had told him a lie or was speaking the truth.
How is it that the sunlight gives us such joy?
Why does this radiance when it falls on the earth
fill us with the joy of living? The whole sky
is blue, the fields are green, the houses all white,
and our enchanted eyes drink in those bright colors
which bring delight to our souls. And then there
springs up in our hearts a desire to dance, to run,
to sing, a happy lightness of thought, a sort of enlarged
tenderness; we feel a longing to embrace the sun.
The blind, as they sit in the doorways, impassive
in their eternal darkness, remain as calm as ever
in the midst of this fresh gaiety, and, not understanding
what is taking place around them, they continually
check their dogs as they attempt to play.
When, at the close of the day, they are returning
home on the arm of a young brother or a little sister,
if the child says: “It was a very fine
day!” the other answers: “I could
notice that it was fine. Loulou wouldn’t
keep quiet.”
I knew one of these men whose life was one of the
most cruel martyrdoms that could possibly be conceived.
He was a peasant, the son of a Norman farmer.
As long as his father and mother lived, he was more
or less taken care of; he suffered little save from
his horrible infirmity; but as soon as the old people
were gone, an atrocious life of misery commenced for
him. Dependent on a sister of his, everybody
in the farmhouse treated him as a beggar who is eating
the bread of strangers. At every meal the very
food he swallowed was made a subject of reproach against
him; he was called a drone, a clown, and although
his brother-in-law had taken possession of his portion
of the inheritance, he was helped grudgingly to soup,
getting just enough to save him from starving.
His face was very pale and his two big white eyes
looked like wafers. He remained unmoved at all
the insults hurled at him, so reserved that one could
not tell whether he felt them.
Moreover, he had never known any tenderness, his mother
having always treated him unkindly and caring very
little for him; for in country places useless persons
are considered a nuisance, and the peasants would
be glad to kill the infirm of their species, as poultry
do.
As soon as he finished his soup he went and sat outside
the door in summer and in winter beside the fireside,
and did not stir again all the evening. He made
no gesture, no movement; only his eyelids, quivering
from some nervous affection, fell down sometimes over
his white, sightless orbs. Had he any intellect,
any thinking faculty, any consciousness of his own
existence? Nobody cared to inquire.
