little light into the blind girl's heart — but how could he, when she was blind and dumb in heart and body and mind? The only answer to kindness

and tenderness was the muttering of a savage animal that grew quiet only at mealtimes, falling upon its food with the greed of famished wolves.

*

A doctor visits the pastor, takes an interest in the case of the girl, Gertrude, and marvels at her mental backwardness, blindness being her only infirmity. His wonder ceases when he learns that no one had ever spoken to the girl in all her life, and he shows the pastor a method for waking her mental powers: first letting her touch the things that bear names, then repeating the names over and over in her hearing; or feeding her something whose name is repeated again and again until she grows familiar with it — and so on...

With the patience of Job the pastor gives himself over to teaching the blind girl — and to the unending reproaches of his wife for spending on what is useless the time set apart for useful work. Nothing pained him more than her insistence that his efforts were like clutching at the wind, and that he had never taken such care of any of his children as he took of this blind girl.

At last the happy hour strikes... That mind asleep in darkness awakens, and the first glimmerings of morning show. Here is the look of understanding, expressing itself in a sweet smile floating for the first time over that face rigid as the faces of statues — is it a smile, or something like a transfiguration? The features of the face stirred like that sudden light which runs before the dawn on the heights of the Alps and sets the snowy summit trembling, drawing it out of the belly of night! And here is the pastor, standing astounded before an angelic face on which, even before the radiance of intelligence, are traced the signs of love and gratitude.

*

After the slowness that went before the awakening, the girl's intelligence devours the course at a gallop. She learns to read by the method of the blind and studies the Gospels and the life of Jesus. Winter ends, and the pastor takes her out to the fields, where she comes to know the worlds of plants and flowers, of birds and animals. In that old hut she had been shut within four walls, and rarely did she step even toward the door, and then only to look out from it upon the world of lights. She used to believe that the singing of the birds was the child of light, like this warmth — the sun's warmth tickling her hands and cheeks. She used to think that the warm air sang as the water

sings in the kettle before the fire. In truth she had never taken notice of anything; she had lived as if in a deep daze and torpor until the pastor laid his hand upon her forehead. And when the pastor told her that these songs come from the throats of living creatures whose only work is to give voice to the joys of nature, she stood as one bewitched, and from that day she took to saying, in her hours of gladness:

“I am as merry as a bird.”

She would ask:

— Is it true that nature is as beautiful as the birds tell us? Why do you not speak of its beauty — and why do you not speak, my lord pastor? Are you afraid of grieving me because I cannot see it? Do not be afraid! I listen to the birds, and I believe I understand everything they say!

The pastor answers her:

— Those who see do not understand the songs of the birds as you do, my little one.

— And why should singing belong only to the birds? Why do the animals not sing?

Before questions like these, perplexity would overcome the pastor...

Then she asks again: are the birds the only animals that fly?

— The butterflies fly too, my child.

— And does the butterfly sing?

— The butterfly tells its joy in another way; its songs are painted in colors on its two wings...

*

And between a good man wholly given to bringing light into a darkened heart and mind, and a jealous woman, and a girl denied everything and then blessed with knowledge, tenderness, and love, a silent, violent tragedy takes form.

*

The pastor takes his ward to a concert to hear the famous piece, La Symphonie pastorale, played by the orchestra of the town of Neuchâtel. There her artistic taste shows itself, and she swims in a world of heavenly, enchanted bliss. On the way home a deep silence takes hold of her, which she breaks by asking:

The blind girl — Is it true that everything you behold is as beautiful as that?

The pastor — As beautiful as what, my dear?

The blind girl — As beautiful as that scene in the symphony, “On the Banks of the Brook”?

The pastor — Those who see do not know their