have come to seek you on your field of battle, instead of awaiting you
at your house. Pray do not disturb yourself; go on with what you are

doing. When it is over, I will tell you the purpose of my visit."
Genestas half seated himself upon the edge of the table, and remained

silent. The firelight shone more brightly in the room than the faint
rays of the sun, for the mountain crests intercepted them, so that

they seldom reached this corner of the valley. A few branches of
resinous pinewood made a bright blaze, and it was by the light of this

fire that the soldier saw the face of the man towards whom he was
drawn by a secret motive, by a wish to seek him out, to study and to

know him thoroughly well. M. Benassis, the local doctor, heard
Genestas with indifference, and with folded arms he returned his bow,

and went back to his patient, quite unaware that he was being
subjected to a scrutiny as earnest as that which the soldier turned

upon him.
Benassis was a man of ordinary height, broad-shouldered and deep-

chested. A capacious green overcoat, buttoned up to the chin,
prevented the officer from observing any characteristic" target="_blank" title="a.特有的 n.特性">characteristic details of his

personal appearance; but his dark and motionless figure served as a
strong relief to his face, which caught the bright light of the

blazing fire. The face was not unlike that of a satyr; there was the
same slightly protruding forehead, full, in this case, of prominences,

all more or less denoting character; the same turned-up nose, with a
sprightly cleavage at the tip; the same high cheek-bones. The lines of

the mouth were crooked; the lips, thick and red. The chin turned
sharply upwards. There was an alert, animated look in the brown eyes,

to which their pearly whites gave great brightness, and which
expressed passions now subdued. His iron-gray hair, the deep wrinkles

in his face, the bushy eyebrows that had grown white already, the
veins on his protuberant nose, the tanned face covered with red

blotches, everything about him, in short, indicated a man of fifty and
the hard work of his profession. The officer could come to no

conclusion as to the capacity of the head, which was covered by a
close cap; but hidden though it was, it seemed to him to be one of the

square-shaped kind that gave rise to the expression "square-headed."
Genestas was accustomed to read the indications that mark the features

of men destined to do great things, since he had been brought into
close relations with the energetic natures sought out by Napoleon; so

he suspected that there must be some mystery in this life of
obscurity, and said to himself as he looked at the remarkable face

before him:
"How comes it that he is still a country doctor?"

When he had made a careful study of this countenance, that, in spite
of its resemblance to other human faces, revealed an inner life nowise

in harmony with a commonplaceexterior, he could not help sharing the
doctor's interest in his patient; and the sight of that patient

completely changed the current of his thoughts.
Much as the old cavalry officer had seen in the course of his

soldier's career, he felt a thrill of surprise and horror at the sight
of a human face which could never have been lighted up with thought--a

livid face in which a look of dumb suffering showed so plainly--the
same look that is sometimes worn by a child too young to speak, and

too weak to cry any longer; in short, it was the wholly animal face of
an old dying cretin. The cretin was the one variety of the human

species with which the commandant had not yet come in contact. At the
sight of the deep, circular folds of skin on the forehead, the sodden,

fish-like eyes, and the head, with its short, coarse, scantily-growing
hair--a head utterly divested of all the faculties of the senses--who

would not have experienced, as Genestas did, an instinctive feeling of
repulsion for a being that had neither the physical beauty of an

animal nor the mental endowments of man, who was possessed of neither
instinct nor reason, and who had never heard nor spoken any kind of

articulate speech? It seemed difficult to expend any regrets over the
poor wretch now visibly drawing towards the very end of an existence

which had not been life in any sense of the word; yet the old woman
watched him with touchinganxiety, and was rubbing his legs where the

hot water did not reach them with as much tenderness as if he had been
her husband. Benassis himself, after a close scrutiny of the dull eyes

and corpse-like face, gently took the cretin's hand and felt his
pulse.

"The bath is doing no good," he said, shaking his head; "let us put
him to bed again."

He lifted the inert mass himself, and carried him across to the
truckle-bed, from whence, no doubt, he had just taken him. Carefully

he laid him at full length, and straightened the limbs that were
growing cold already, putting the head and hand in position, with all

the heed that a mother could bestow upon her child.
"It is all over, death is very near," added Benassis, who remained

standing by the bedside.
The old woman gazed at the dying form, with her hands on her hips. A

few tears stole down her cheeks. Genestas remained silent. He was
unable to explain to himself how it was that the death of a being that

concerned him so little should affect him so much. Unconsciously he
shared the feeling of boundless pity that these hapless creatures

excite among the dwellers in the sunless valleys wherein Nature has
placed them. This sentiment has degenerated into a kind of religious

superstition in families to which cretins belong; but does it not
spring from the most beautiful of Christian virtues--from charity, and

from a belief in a rewardhereafter, that most effectual support of
our social system, and the one thought that enables us to endure our

miseries? The hope of inheriting eternal bliss helps the relations of
these unhappy creatures and all others round about them to exert on a

large scale, and with sublimedevotion, a mother's ceaseless
protecting care over an apathetic creature who does not understand it

in the first instance, and who in a little while forgets it all.
Wonderful power of religion! that has brought a blind beneficence to

the aid of an equally blind misery. Wherever cretins exist, there is a
popular belief that the presence of one of these creatures brings luck

to a family--a superstition that serves to sweeten lives which, in the
midst of a town population, would be condemned by a mistaken

philanthropy to submit to the harsh discipline of an asylum. In the
higher end of the valley of Isere, where cretins are very numerous,

they lead an out-of-door life with the cattle which they are taught to
herd. There, at any rate, they are at large, and receive the reverence

due to misfortune.
A moment later the village bell clinked at slow regular intervals, to

acquaint the flock with the death of one of their number. In the sound
that reached the cottage but faintly across the intervening space,

there was a thought of religion which seemed to fill it with a
melancholy peace. The tread of many feet echoed up the road, giving

notice of an approaching crowd of people--a crowd that uttered not a
word. Then suddenly the chanting of the Church broke the stillness,

calling up the confused thoughts that take possession of the most
sceptical minds, and compel them to yield to the influence of the

touching harmonies of the human voice. The Church was coming to the
aid of a creature that knew her not. The cure appeared, preceded by a

choir-boy, who bore the crucifix, and followed by the sacristan
carrying the vase of holy water, and by some fifty women, old men, and

children, who had all come to add their prayers to those of the
Church. The doctor and the soldier looked at each other, and silently

withdrew to a corner to make room for the kneeling crowd within and
without the cottage. During the consoling ceremony of the Viaticum,

celebrated for one who had never sinned, but to whom the Church on
earth was bidding a last farewell, there were signs of real sorrow on

most of the rough faces of the gathering, and tears flowed over the
rugged cheeks that sun and wind and labor in the fields had tanned and

wrinkled. The sentiment of voluntary kinship was easy to explain.
There was not one in the place who had not pitied the unhappy

creature, not one who would not have given him his daily bread. Had he
not met with a father's care from every child, and found a mother in

the merriest little girl?
"He is dead!" said the cure.

The words struck his hearers with the most unfeigned dismay. The tall
candles were lighted, and several people undertook to watch with the

dead that night. Benassis and the soldier went out. A group of
peasants in the doorway stopped the doctor to say:

"Ah! if you have not saved his life, sir, it was doubtless because God
wished to take him to Himself."

"I did my best, children," the doctor answered.
When they had come a few paces from the deserted village, whose last

inhabitant had just died, the doctor spoke to Genestas.
"You would not believe, sir, what real solace is contained for me in