The young boy obeyed at once, arose, looked at the doctor timidly with his large blue eyes, showed his deference by a salute, made a parting sign to the Schoolmaster, and departed, repeating, in a plaintive voice, "Strawberries! strawberries!"
The doctor, perceiving the painful effect this scene had produced upon Madame George, said to her, "Happily, madame, we are going to find Morel, and, if my hopes are realized, your heart will expand with joy on seeing this excellent man restored to the tenderness of his wife and daughter."
And the physician withdrew, followed by the friends of the artisan Morel. The Schoolmaster remained alone with the learned madman, who commenced to explain to him, very learnedly and very eloquently, the imposing movement of the stars, which describe their immense revolutions silently in the heavens of which the normal state is night. But the Schoolmaster did not listen. He thought, with profound despair, that he should never hear again the voices of his son and wife. Confident of the just horror with which he had inspired them, of the misfortune, the shame, the affright into which he would have plunged them by the revelation of his name, he would have endured rather a thousand deaths than have disclosed himself to them. One single last consolation remained to him: for a moment he had inspired his son with pity. And in spite of himself, he recalled to mind the works which Rudolph had spoken to him before he had inflicted this terrible chastisement.
"Each of your words is an oath; each of your words shall be a prayer. You are audacious and cruel because you are strong; you shall be meek and humble because you shall be weak. Your heart is closed to repentance; some day you will weep for your victims. From a man you have made yourself a savage beast; some day your understanding shall be restored by repentance. You have not even spared what the wild beasts spare, the female and her young. After a long life consecrated to the expiation of your crimes, your last prayer shall be to supplicate God to grant you the unhoped-for happiness of dying before your wife and your son."
* * * * *
"We are going to pass into the court of the idiots, and then we shall reach the building where we shall find Morel," said the doctor, on leaving the court where the Schoolmaster was.
CHAPTER XXVI.
MOREL, THE DIAMOND-CUTTER.
Notwithstanding the sadness with which the sight of the lunatics had inspired her, Madame George could not but stop for a moment before a railed court, where the incurable idiots were confined. Poor beings! who often have not even the instinct of the beast, and whose origin is almost always unknown—unknown to all as well as to themselves. Thus they pass through life, absolute strangers to the affections, to thoughts, experiencing only the most limited animal wants. If madness does not reveal itself at once to a superficial observer by a single inspection of the physiognomy of the lunatic, it is but too easy to recognize the physical character of idiotism. Dr. Herbin had no occasion to direct the attention of Madame George, to the expression of savage brutishness, stupid insensibility, or imbecile amazement, which gave to the features of the unfortunate wretches an expression at once hideous and painful to behold. Almost all were clothed in long dirty frocks, ragged and torn; for, in spite of all possible care, these beings, absolutely deprived of instinct and reason, cannot be prevented from tearing and soiling their vestments, crawling and rolling like beasts in the mire of the courts, where they remain during the day. Some of them, crouched in the most obscure corners of a shed which sheltered them, gathered in a heap, like animals in their dens, uttered a kind of hollow and continual rattling noise. Others, leaning against the wall immovable, looked fixedly at the sun. An old man, of monstrous obesity, seated on a wooden chair, devoured his pittance with animal voracity, casting on either side oblique angry glances. Some walked rapidly, describing a circle, limiting themselves to a very small space. This strange exercise would last for entire hours. Seated on the ground, others swayed their bodies continually backward and forward, only interrupting this movement of vertiginous monotony by shouts of laughter—the guttural, harsh laugh of idiocy. Others, in fine, were almost in a state of annihilation, only opening their eyes at the moment of repast, remaining inert, inactive, deaf, dumb, blind—not a cry, not a gesture announcing their vitality. The complete absence of verbal or intellectual communication is one of the most gloomy characteristics of a company of idiots, Lunatics, notwithstanding the incoherency of their words and thoughts, at least speak, know each other, and seek each other; but among idiots there reigns a stupid indifference, an isolated savageness. Never do they pronounce an articulate word. Sometimes is heard among them savage laughter, or groans and cries which resemble nothing human. Scarcely can a few among them recognize their keepers; and yet, let us repeat it with admiration, with reverence to the Creator, these unfortunate creatures, who seem no longer to belong to our species, and not even to the animal species, by the complete annihilation of their intellectual faculties; these incurable beings, who partake more of the mollusca than animated life, and who often thus pass through all the stages of a long existence, are surrounded by tender cares, of which we have no idea. Doubtless it is well to respect the principle of human dignity, even in these unhappy beings who have only the exterior of men; but let us always repeat, one should also think of the dignity of those who, endowed with all their faculties, filled with zeal and activity, and the living strength of the nation; to give them consciousness of this dignity by encouraging them, and reward them when it is manifested by the love of industry, by resignation, by probity; not to say, in fine, with semi-orthodox selfishness, "Let us punish here below, God will recompense above."
"Poor people!" said Madame George, following the doctor, after having cast a last look into the court of the idiots; "how sad it is to think there is no remedy for their woes!"