which it was necessary to carefully watch him; that it
diminished with the lessening crescent until it fell away into a quiet
abeyance of faculties that was but a step apart from the normal
intelligence of his kind. At his worst he was a stricken madman
acutely sensitive to impressions; at his best an inoffensive peasant who
said nothing foolish and nothing wise.

When he was twenty, his father died, and Camille and his mother had to
make out existence in company.

Now, the veil, in my first knowledge of him, was never rent; yet
occasionally it seemed to me to gape in a manner that let a little
momentary finger of light through, in the flashing of which a soul
kindled and shut in his eyes, like a hard-dying spark in ashes. I wished
to know what gave life to the spark, and I set to pondering the problem.

"He was not always thus?" I would say to Madame Barbiere.

"But no, Monsieur, truly. This place--bah! we are here imbeciles all to
the great world, without doubt; but Camille!--_he_ was by nature of those
who make the history of cities--a rose in the wilderness. Monsieur
smiles?"

"By no means. A scholar, Madame?"

"A scholar of nature, Monsieur; a dreamer of dreams such as they become
who walk much with the spirits on the lonely mountains."

"Torrents, and avalanches, and the good material forces of nature, Madame
means."

"Ah! Monsieur may talk, but he knows. He has heard the _foehn_ sweep down
from the hills and spin the great stones off the house-roofs. And one may
look and see nothing, yet the stones go. It is the wind that runs before
the avalanche that snaps the pine trees; and the wind is the spirit that
calls down the great snow-slips."

"But how may Madame who sees nothing; know then a spirit to be abroad?"

"My faith; one may know one's foot is on the wild mint without shifting
one's sole to look."

"Madame will pardon me. No doubt also one may know a spirit by the smell
of sulphur?"

"Monsieur is a sceptic. It comes with the knowledge of cities. There
are even such in little Bel-Oiseau, since the evil time when they took
to engrossing the contracts of good citizens on the skins of the poor
jew-beards that give us flesh and milk. It is horrible as the Tannery of
Meudon. In my young days, Monsieur, such agreements were inscribed upon
wood."

"Quite so, Madame, and entirely to the point. Also one may see from whom
Camille inherited his wandering propensities. But for his fall--it was
always una