The young mother said no more, but from time to time an anguish too deep for expression brought the tears to her eyes. They forced their way through the thick black eye-lashes, and slowly rolled down her pale marble-like cheeks. Perchance her mother’s heart was torn by a presentiment of some dark, abiding misery hanging like a heavy cloud over the infant’s crib, and destined to accompany him through life even unto the grave. These signs of emotion, on the other hand, were very likely nothing more than the wanderings of delirium. But however this may have been, the child was indeed born blind.
II.
At first no one perceived it. The boy had that vague way of looking at objects common to all very young infants. As the days went by, the life of the new-born man could soon be reckoned by weeks. His eyes grew clearer; the thin film that had overspread them disappeared, and the pupil became defined. But the child was never seen to turn his head, to follow the bright sunbeams that found their way into the room; nor did the merry chirping of the birds, nor the rustling of the branches of the green beech-trees in the shaded garden beneath the windows, attract his notice.
The mother, who had now recovered, was the first one to mark with anxiety the strange immobility of the child’s expression, so invariably calm and serious. With pitiful eyes, like a frightened dove, she would question those about her: “Tell me what makes him look so unnatural?”
“What do you mean?” strangers would reply in tones of indifference; “he looks like all other children of his age.”
“But watch him! See how oddly he fumbles with his hands!”
“The child cannot yet regulate the movements of his hands by the impressions which his eyes receive,” replied the doctor.
“Why does he look constantly in one direction? He is—blind!”