The child was born blind. Who was to blame for this misfortune? No one.
There was no slightest shade of the “evil eye;” the very cause of the
misfortune itself was hidden somewhere in the depths of the mysterious
and complex processes of life. Anguish pierced the mother’s heart as
she gazed on her blind boy. She suffered not alone as a mother, in her
sympathy with her son’s affliction, together with a sad prescience of
the painful future awaiting her child; but added to these feelings there
dwelt within the depths of the young mother’s heart a consciousness
that the cause of this misfortune may have been latent, as a dreaded
possibility, in those who gave him life. This in itself sufficed to make
the little creature, with his beautiful sightless eyes, the central
figure of the family and its unconscious despot. Every member of the
household strove to gratify his lightest fancy.
What would in time have become of this boy, unconsciously predisposed as
he was to resent his misfortune, and whose egotism was fostered by all
those who surrounded him, had not a strange fatality combined with the
Austrian sabres to compel Uncle Maxim to settle down in the country in
his sister’s family,—no one can tell. By the presence of the blind boy
in the house, the active mind of the crippled soldier was gradually and
imperceptibly directed into a new channel. He would still smoke his pipe
hour after hour, but the old expression of pain and dejection had given
place to one of interest. Yet the more Uncle Maxim pondered, the more he
wrinkled his thick brows, and more and more heavy grew the volumes of
smoke. Finally one day he made up his mind to interfere.
“That youngster,” he said, puffing out ring after ring of smoke, “will be
much more unhappy than I am. Far better had he never been born.”
An expression of acute suffering saddened the mother’s face as she gave
her brother a reproachful glance. “It is cruel to remind me of this,
Max,” she said gently, “and to do it wantonly!”
“I am simply telling you the truth,” replied Maxim. “I have lost a hand
and a foot, but I have eyes. This youngster has no eyes, and in time will
have neither hands nor feet nor will.”
“What do you mean?”
“Pray understand me, Anna,” said Maxim in a gentler tone, “I would
not reiterate these cruel truths had I no object. This boy’s nervous
organization is extremely sensitive; hence it is possible so to develop
his other faculties that their acuteness will compensate him, at least to
a certain degree, for his blindness. But to attain this he must use his
faculties; and the use of one’s faculties must be compelled by necessity.
An unwise solicitude, that prevents him from making any effort, will ruin
his chances for living a full life.”
The mother was sensible, and therefore knew how to control that
instinctive impulse which urged her, at every pitiful cry of the child,
to rush to him.
A few months after this conversation the boy could creep about the rooms
with ease and rapidity; he listened intently to every sound, and by
his sense of touch eagerly examined every object that happened to come
within his reach. He soon learned to know his mother by her footstep,
by the rustling of her dress, and by certain other signs perceptible to
him alone; it made no difference to him whether there were many persons
in the room or not, or if they changed their positions,—he never failed
to turn with unerring accuracy toward the spot where she sat. When
she lifted him in her arms he knew at once that he was sitting in his
mother’s lap. When others took him up, he would pass his little hands
rapidly over the face of the person, thus recognizing almost at once the
nurse, Uncle Maxim, or his father. But if it happened to be a stranger,
then the movements of the tiny hands were more deliberate; the boy
passed them carefully and attentively over the unfamiliar face, his
features betraying his intense interest. He seemed to be looking at the
strange face with his finger-tips.
By nature the blind boy was a very lively and active child; but as month
succeeded month, blindness set its impress on the boy’s temperament,
which began to manifest its true character. He gradually lost his
rapidity of motion. He would sit perfectly still for hours in some remote
corner, with unchanging expression, as if listening. When at times the
various sounds that usually distracted his attention ceased, and the
room became quiet, the child would sit absorbed in thought, and upon his
beautiful face, serious beyond his years, an expression of bewilderment
and surprise would appear.
Uncle Maxim was right. The exquisite organization of the child manifested
itself in an extraordinary susceptibility of the senses of hearing
and touch, by means of which he verified to a certain extent the
correctness of his impressions. All who saw him were amazed at the
wonderful delicacy of his touch. Occasionally it even seemed as if he
were able to distinguish colors; for when, as sometimes happened, bits
of bright-colored cloth fell into his hands, his slender fingers would
linger over them, while a look half of perplexity, half of interest,
would flash across his face. As time went on, however, it grew more
and more evident that his susceptibility was principally developed in
the sense of hearing. He quickly learned to distinguish the different
rooms in the house by sound; he recognized the steps of the members of
the household, the creaking of his invalid uncle’s chair, the dry and
measured whiz of the thread in his mother’s hands, or the regular ticking
of the clock. Sometimes, as he felt his way along the side of the room,
he would hear a slight rustle inaudible to others, and put out his hand
to catch a fly crawling on the wall. When the startled insect rose and
flew away, an expression of painful surprise would come over the face
of the blind boy. He could not account for the mysterious disappearance
of the fly. But the next moment, in spite of his perplexity, his face
assumed an expression of intelligent interest; he turned his head in the
direction taken by the fly,—his acute sense of hearing having caught in
the air the scarcely perceptible sound of the insect’s wings.
Of all the glittering, murmuring, bustling world without, the blind child
could form no conception save by its sounds. That peculiar expression
characteristic of an intense concentration of the sense of hearing had
become habitual to his face: the lower jaw was a little depressed, the
brows contracted, and the head inclined slightly forward on its slender
neck. But the beautiful eyes, with their unchanging gaze, imparted to the
face of the blind child a stern and at the same time a touching aspect.