M. François shook his head, and as a consolation—“you see not every one can be a dwarf”—he gravely answered:
“Do not pity yourself, sir; you are distinguished for your learning.”
Since then M. François has told me all about his present life. He lives at Villette with his mother, whom he supports. In the evening, as the distance is too great for his short legs, [p062] he goes out by the last omnibus, and even when the vehicle is full, he is charged for his place.
“Yet I take so little room, sir!”
M. François is a brave lad; and those who have seen him in his Cordovan boots, driving his team of six horses, know that he is an exceptionally good whip. It should though be noticed, that however deficient the noués may be in size, they possess the same intelligence and sometimes the full strength of a man of normal height. In 1802 Germany possessed a clever painter named Jacob Lehnen, who was exactly 3 ft. 10 in. high; and I read in an English newspaper, the Daily Advertiser, dated 18th August, 1740, an announcement of the arrival at a London tavern, the Great Glass, of a Persian dwarf called the Second Samson, only 3 ft. 8 in., who carried two strong men at arm’s-length and danced between the tables with his double burden.
These deformities are not attacked by the decrepitude which prevents their comrades from living beyond their [p063] twentieth or twenty-fifth year. There are historical instances of centenarian noués.
In 1819, at the Court Theatre, a noués was exhibited aged sixty-three; her name was Thérèse Souvary, and according to the advertisements, she was betrothed in her youth to Bébé, a dwarf belonging to good King Stanislaus. And if these advertisements were untrue, there are proofs in other places of a great many marriages contracted by dwarfs, who have had large families. M. Edward Garnier, in his curious pathological study of the noués, quotes the case of the painter dwarf Gibson, who married a wife as small as himself and had nine children by her, of whom five were of average height and attained manhood. Two other dwarfs, married in London, Robert and Judith Kinner, had fourteen children all well made and robust. Lastly, any one may have seen in the Western papers in 1883, the notice of the death at Sables d’Olonne, of a little dwarf long exhibited in fairs under the [p064] name of the Petite Nine. This tiny creature, who was not more than 31½ inches high, married a M. Callias and had several children by him. She had even survived the Cesarean operation, and reached a great age notwithstanding her scandalous insobriety.