as soon as the old people were gone,
an atrocious life of misery commenced for him. Dependent on a sister of
his, everybody in the farmhouse treated him as a beggar who is eating
the bread of strangers. At every meal the very food he swallowed was
made a subject of reproach against him; he was called a drone, a clown,
and although his brother-in-law had taken possession of his portion of
the inheritance, he was helped grudgingly to soup, getting just enough
to save him from starving.

His face was very pale and his two big white eyes looked like wafers. He
remained unmoved at all the insults hurled at him, so reserved that one
could not tell whether he felt them.

Moreover, he had never known any tenderness, his mother having always
treated him unkindly and caring very little for him; for in country
places useless persons are considered a nuisance, and the peasants would
be glad to kill the infirm of their species, as poultry do.

As soon as he finished his soup he went and sat outside the door in
summer and in winter beside the fireside, and did not stir again all the
evening. He made no gesture, no movement; only his eyelids, quivering
from some nervous affection, fell down sometimes over his white,
sightless orbs. Had he any intellect, any thinking faculty, any
consciousness of his own existence? Nobody cared to inquire.

For some years things went on in this fashion. But his incapacity for
work as well as his impassiveness eventually exasperated his relatives,
and he became a laughingstock, a sort of butt for merriment, a prey to
the inborn ferocity, to the savage gaiety of the brutes who surrounded
him.

It is easy to imagine all the cruel practical jokes inspired by his
blindness. And, in order to have some fun in return for feeding him,
they now converted his meals into hours of pleasure for the neighbors
and of punishment for the helpless creature himself.

The peasants from the nearest houses came to this entertainment; it
was talked about from door to door, and every day the kitchen of the
farmhouse was full of people. Sometimes they placed before his plate,
when he was beginning to eat his soup, some cat or dog. The animal
instinctively perceived the man's infirmity, and, softly approaching,
commenced eating noiselessly, lapping up the soup daintily; and,
when they lapped the food rather noisily, rousing the poor fellow's
attention, they would prudently scamper away to avoid the blow of the
spoon direc