d he
replied:

"You are quite right; the poor creature who is living there must never
see what is going on outside. She is a mad woman, or rather an idiot,
what you Normans would call a _Niente_[8]. It is a miserable story, but
a very singular pathological case at the same time. Shall I tell you?"

[Footnote 8: A _Nothing_.--TRANSLATOR.]

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 sense into
her head, but nothing succeeded. I thought that 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 some
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 when a death occurs in a house.

"She was fond of rolling on the grass, like young animals do, and of
running about madly, and she used to clap her hands every morning, when
the sun shone into her room, and would jump out of bed and insist by
signs, on being dressed as quickly as possible, so that she might get
out.

"She did not appear to distinguish between people, between her mother
and her nurse, or between her father and me, or between the coachman and
the cook. I liked her parents, who were very unhappy on her account,
very much, and went to see them nearly every day. I dined with them
tolerably frequently, which enabled me to remark that Bertha (they had
called her Bertha), seemed to recognize the various dishes, and to
prefer some to others. At that time she was tw