rd the voice of some phantom, the child returns home,
frightened, confused. From that day, he is transformed. Until then,
he had thought only of himself, he had become grey with his own
sorrow. Afterward, he suffers for others; his personal sorrow
diminishes, and his life becomes an expression of the sorrows of
his fellows in misery, an ardent and passionate prayer for others
who also are deprived of sight.

For several years he has been friends with a young girl of his
neighborhood. They marry, and Evelyn, his wife, brings some
happiness to the poor blind man. But soon there comes a time of
indescribable anguish. Evelyn gives birth to a boy, and Peter is
tortured by a presentiment of impending evil. Will the son be blind
like his father? The few moments when the doctors are testing the
infant's sight pass like so many centuries. Finally the physician
says: "The pupil is contracting, the child is not blind." Peter,
seated by the window, pale and motionless, rises quickly at these
words. In a moment fear has disappeared and hope is transformed into
certainty and fills the blind man's heart with joy. "The child is
not blind." One might say that these few words of the doctor had
burned a path in his brain.

"His whole frame vibrated like a taut cord which had been snapped. A
flash went through him, like lightning in a sunless sky, conjuring
up in him strange phantasms. Whether they were sounds or sights he
could not determine. But if they were sounds they were sounds which
he could see. They sparkled like the vault of the sky, shone like
the sun, waved like the rustling, whispering grass of the steppes.
These were the sensations of a moment. What followed he was unable
to recall. But he stubbornly affirmed that in this moment he had
_seen_. What had he seen? How had he seen? Had he really seen? This
always remained a mystery. People said that it was impossible. He,
however, affirmed that in that moment he had seen the earth, his
wife, his mother, his son, and Uncle Maxim.... He was standing up,
and his face was so illumined and so strange that every one around
him was silent.... Later on, there remained nothing but the
remembrance of a sort of joyous satisfaction, and the absolute
conviction that, at that moment, he had seen...."

A year later, at Kiev, at a concert for charity, Peter made his
debut. An enormous crowd gathered to hear the blind musician. From
the very first the audience was captivated. Moved to its dep