He lacked the blood necessary for the efforts of life, and remained, as it were, clinging to the soil, imbibing all the sap he could.  It was like a slow hatching in the warm egg of springtide.  Albine, remembering certain remarks of Doctor Pascal, felt terrified at seeing him remain in this state, ‘innocent,’ dull-witted like a little boy.  She had heard it said that certain maladies left insanity behind them.  And she spent hours in gazing at him and trying her utmost, as mothers do, to make him smile.  But as yet he had not laughed.  When she passed her hand across his eyes, he never saw, he never followed the shadow.  Even when she spoke to him, he barely turned his head in the direction whence the sound came.  She had but one consolation:  he thrived splendidly, he was quite a handsome child.

For another whole week she lavished the tenderest care on him.  She patiently waited for him to grow.  And as she marked various symptoms of awakening perception, her fears subsided and she began to think that time might make a man of him.  When she touched him now he started slightly.  Another time, one night, he broke into a feeble laugh.  On the morrow, when she had seated him at the window, she went down into the garden, and ran about in it, calling to him the while.  She vanished under the trees, flitted across the sunny patches, and came back breathless and clapping her hands.  At first his wavering eyes failed to perceive her.  But as she started off again, perpetually playing at hide-and-seek, reappearing behind every other bush, he was at last able to follow the white gleam of her skirt; and when she suddenly came forward and stood with upraised face below his window, he stretched out his arms and seemed anxious to go down to her.  But she came upstairs again, and embraced him proudly:  ‘Ah! you saw me, you saw me!’ she cried.  ’You would like to come into the garden with me, would you not?——­ If you only knew how wretched you have made me these last few days, with your stupid ways, never seeing me or hearing me!’

He listened to her, but apparently with some slight sensation of pain that made him bend his neck in a shrinking way.

‘You are better now, however,’ she went on.  ’Well enough to come down whenever you like——­ Why don’t you say anything?  Have you lost your tongue?  Oh, what a baby!  Why, I shall have to teach him how to talk!’

And thereupon she really did amuse herself by telling him the names of the things he touched.  He could only stammer, reiterating the syllables, and failing to utter a single word plainly.  However, she began to walk him about the room, holding him up and leading him from the bed to the window—­quite a long journey.  Two or three times he almost fell on the way, at which she laughed.  One day he fairly sat down on the floor, and she had all the trouble in the world to get him up on his feet again.  Then she made him undertake the round of the room, letting him rest by the way on the sofa and the chairs—­a