few minutes while I go and see a
patient, and then I will take you to Chatel-Guyon, so as to show you the
general aspect of the town, and all the mountain chain of the Puy-de-Dome
before lunch. You can wait for me outside; I shall only go upstairs and
come down immediately."

He left me outside one of those old, gloomy, silent, melancholy houses,
which one sees in the provinces, and this one appeared to look
particularly sinister, and I soon discovered the reason. All the large
windows on the first floor were boarded half way up. The upper part of
them alone could be opened, as if one had wished to prevent the people
who were locked up in that huge stone box from looking into the street.

When the doctor came down again, I told him how it struck me, and he
replied:

"You are quite right; the poor creature who is living there must never
see what is going on outside. She is a madwoman, or rather an idiot, what
you Normans would call a Niente. It is a miserable story, but a very
singular pathological case at the same time. Shall I tell you?"

I begged him to do so, and he continued:

"Twenty years ago the owners of this house, who were my patients, had a
daughter who was like all other girls, but I soon discovered that while
her body became admirably developed, her intellect remained stationary.

"She began to walk very early, but she could not talk. At first I thought
she was deaf, but I soon discovered that, although she heard perfectly,
she did not understand anything that was said to her. Violent noises made
her start and frightened her, without her understanding how they were
caused.

"She grew up into a superb woman, but she was dumb, from an absolute want
of intellect. I tried all means to introduce a gleam of intelligence into
her brain, but nothing succeeded. I thought I noticed that she knew her
nurse, though as soon as she was weaned, she failed to recognize her
mother. She could never pronounce that word which is the first that
children utter and the last which soldiers murmur when they are dying on
the field of battle. She sometimes tried to talk, but she produced
nothing but incoherent sounds.

"When the weather was fine, she laughed continually, and emitted low
cries which might be compared to the twittering of birds; when it rained
she cried and moaned in a mournful, terrifying manner, which sounded like
the howling of a dog before a death occurs in a house.

"She was fond of rolling on the grass,