ason why I settled here, my
young friend."

And, delighted at his own joke, he carried me off, rubbing his hands.

As soon as I had swallowed a cup of coffee, he made me go and see the
town. I admired the druggist's house, and the other noted houses, which
were all black, but as pretty as bric-a-brac, with their facades of
sculptured stone. I admired the statue of the Virgin, the patroness
of butchers, and he told me an amusing story about this, which I will
relate some other time, and then Dr. Bonnet said to me:

"I must beg you to excuse me for a 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
recogni