"Quelquefois je sais--quelquefois je ne sais pas--mais quand je sais,
je sais, et il n'y pas a s'y tromper!"
Indeed, on one occasion that I remember well a very strange thing
happened; he not only pointed out the north with absolute accuracy, as
he stood carefully blindfolded in the gymnastic ground, after having
been turned and twisted again and again--but still blindfolded, he
vaulted the wire fence and ran round to the refectory door, which
served as the home at rounders, all of us following; and there he
danced a surprising dance of his own invention, that he called 'La
Paladine,' the most humorously graceful and grotesque exhibition I
ever saw; and then, taking a ball out of his pocket, he shouted, "A
l'amandier!" and threw the ball. Straight and swift it flew, and hit
the almond tree, which was quite twenty yards off; and after this he
ran round the yard from base to base, as at "la balle au camp," till
he reached the camp again.
"If ever he goes blind," said the wondering M. Merovee, "he'll never
need a dog to lead him about."
"He must have some special friend above!" said Madame Germain
(Merovee's sister, who was looking on).
_Prophetic words!_ I have never forgotten them, nor the tear that
glistened in each of her kind eyes as she spoke. She was a deeply
religious and very emotional person, and loved Barty almost as if he
were a child of her own.
Such women have strange intuitions.
Barty was often asked to repeat this astonishing performance before
skeptical people--parents of boys, visitors, etc.--who had been told
of it, and who believed he could not have been properly blindfolded;
but he could never be induced to do so.
There was no mistake about the blindfolding--I helped in it myself;
and he afterwards told me the whole thing was "aussi simple que
bonjour" if once he felt the north--for then, with his back to the
refectory door, he knew exactly the position and distance of every
tree from where he was.
"It's all nonsense about my going blind and being able to do without a
dog," he added; "I should be just as helpless as any other blind man,
unless I was in a place I knew as well as my own pocket--like this
play-ground! Besides, _I_ shan't go blind; nothing will ever happen to
_my_ eyes--they're the strongest and best in the whole school!"
He said this exultingly, dilating his nostrils and chest; and looked
proudly up and around, like Ajax defying the lightning.
"But what _do_ you feel when you feel the north, Barty--a kind of
tingling?" I asked.
"Oh--I feel where it is--as if I'd got a mariner's compass trembling
inside my stomach--and as if I wasn't afraid of anybody or anything in
the world--as if I could go and have my head chopped off and not care
a fig."
"Ah, well--I can't make it out--I give it up," I exclaimed.
"So do I," exclaims Barty.
"But tell me, Barty," I whispered--"_have_ you--have you _really_ got
a--a--_special friend above_?"
"Ask no questions and you'll get no lies," said Barty, and winked at
me one eye after the other--and went about his business, and I about
mine.