remained unmoved in spite of the insults inflicted upon him, so shut up
in himself that one could not tell whether he felt them at all.

Moreover, he had never known any tenderness; his mother had always
treated him very unkindly, caring scarcely at all for him; for in
country places the useless are obnoxious, and the peasants would be
glad, like hens, to kill the infirm of their species.

As soon as the soup had been gulped down, he went to the door in summer
time and sat down, to the chimney-corner in winter time, and, after
that, never stirred till night. 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
as to whether he had or no.

For some years things went on in this fashion But his incapacity for
doing anything as well as his impassiveness eventually exasperated his
relatives, and he became a laughing-stock, a sort of martyred buffoon, a
prey given over to native ferocity, to the savage gaiety of the brutes
who surrounded him.

It is easy to imagine all the cruel practical jokes inspired by his
blindness. And, in order to have some fun in return for feeding him,
they now converted his meals into hours of pleasure for the neighbors
and of punishment for the helpless creature himself.

The peasants from the nearest houses came to this entertainment; it was
talked about from door to door, and every day the kitchen of the
farmhouse was full of people. For instance, they put on the table in