She is so miserably clad that you lower your eyes before her, although she cannot see. She wanders and seeks, incapable of understanding the wrong they have done, they have allowed to be done, the wrong which no one remembers. Alas, to the prating indifference and the indolent negligence of men there is only this poor little blind witness.
She stops in front of us and puts out her hand awkwardly. She is begging! No one troubles himself about her now. She is talking to her dog; he was born in the castle kennels—Marie told me about him. He was the last of a litter, ill-shaped, with a head too big, and bad eyes; and the Baroness said, as they were going to drown him, and because she is always thinking of good things, "Give him to the little blind girl." The child is training him to guide her; but he is young, he wants to play when other dogs go by, he hears her with listless ear. It is difficult for him to begin serious work; and he plucks the string from her hands. She calls to him; and waits.
Then, during a long time, a good many passers-by appear and vanish. We do not look at all of them.
But lo, turning the corner like some one of importance, here comes a sleek and tawny mastiff, with the silvery tinkle of a trinket which gleams on his neck. He is proclaiming and preceding his young mistress, Mademoiselle Evelyn de Monthyon, who is riding her pony. The little girl caracoles sedately, clad in a riding habit, and armed with a crop. She has been an orphan for a long time. She is the mistress of the castle. She is twelve years old and has millions. A mounted groom in full livery follows her, looking like a stage-player or a chamberlain; and then, with measured steps, an elderly governess, dressed in black silk, and manifestly thinking of some Court.
Mademoiselle Evelyn de Monthyon and her pretty name set us thinking of Antoinette, who hardly has a name; and it seems to us that these two are the only ones who have passed before our eyes. The difference in the earthly fates of these two creatures who have both the same fragile innocence, the same pure and complete incapacity of childhood, plunges us into a tragedy of thought. The misery and the might which have fallen on those little immature heads are equally undeserved. It is a disgrace for men to see a poor child; it is also a disgrace for men to see a rich child.
I feel malicious towards the little sumptuous princess who has just appeared, already haughty in spite of her littleness; and I am stirred with pity for the frail victim whom life is obliterating with all its might; and Marie, I can see, gentle Marie, has the same thoughts. Who would not feel them in face of this twin picture of childhood which a passing chance has brought us, of this one picture torn in two?
But I resist this emotion; the understanding of things must be based, not on sentiment, but on reason. There must be justice, not charity. Kindness is solitary. Compassion becomes one with him whom we pity; it allows us to fathom him, to understand him alone amongst the rest; but it blurs and befogs the laws of the whole. I must set off with a clear idea, like the beam of a lighthouse through the deformities and temptations of night.
As I have seen equality, I am seeing inequality. Equality in truth; inequality in fact. We observe in man's beginning the beginning of his hurt; the root of the error is in inheritance.
Injustice, artificial and groundless authority, royalty without reason, the fantastic freaks of fortune which suddenly put crowns on heads! It is there, as far as the monstrous authority of the dead, that we must draw a straight line and clean the darkness away.
The transfer of the riches and authority of the dead, of whatever kind, to their descendants, is not in accord with reason and the moral law. The laws of might and of possessions are for the living alone. Every man must occupy in the common lot a place which he owes to his work and not to luck.