still were possible. Then her face
had resumed its vacant expression. She seemed indifferent to every one
and everything, laughing, sometimes, at an accident, at a fall, but most
often seeing nothing and hearing nothing, gazing fixedly into vacancy.

When Charles had been brought to her the keeper had immediately
installed him before the little table, in front of his
great-great-grandmother. The girl kept a package of pictures for
him--soldiers, captains, kings clad in purple and gold, and she gave
them to him with a pair of scissors, saying:

"There, amuse yourself quietly, and behave well. You see that to-day
grandmother is very good. You must be good, too."

The boy raised his eyes to the madwoman's face, and both looked at each
other. At this moment the resemblance between them was extraordinary.
Their eyes, especially, their vacant and limpid eyes, seemed to lose
themselves in one another, to be identical. Then it was the physiognomy,
the whole face, the worn features of the centenarian, that passed over
three generations to this delicate child's face, it, too, worn already,
as it were, and aged by the wear of the race. Neither smiled, they
regarded each other intently, with an air of grave imbecility.

"Well!" continued the keeper, who had acquired the habit of talking to
herself to cheer herself when with her mad charge, "you cannot deny each
other. The same hand made you both. You are the very spit-down of
each other. Come, laugh a bit, amuse yourselves, since you like to be
together."

But to fix his attention for any length of time fatigued Charles, and
he was the first to lower his eyes; he seemed to be interested in his
pictures, while Aunt Dide, who had an astonishing power of fixing her
attention, as if she had been turned into stone, continued to look at
him fixedly, without even winking an eyelid.

The keeper busied herself for a few moments in the little sunny room,
made gay by its light, blue-flowered paper. She made the bed which she
had been airing, she arranged the linen on the shelves of the press.
But she generally profited by the presence of the boy to take a little
relaxation. She had orders never to leave her charge alone, and now that
he was here she ventured to trust her with him.

"Listen to me well," she went on, "I have to go out for a little, and if
she stirs, if she should need me, ring for me, call me at once; do you
hear? You understand, you are a big enough boy to be able to c