All along the route I was thinking, “Is she sleeping? And what kind of dark sleep is it? And how does the sleep of the old woman differ from this? Hosted in this opaque body, an immured soul is without doubt waiting to finally touch some ray of your grace, Father! Would you permit my love, perhaps, to help her escape from this horrible night?”
I knew very well that I could expect an angry welcome upon my return home. My wife is a garden of virtue, and even in those difficult moments that we sometimes go through, I never doubted for an instant the quality of her heart. But her natural charity does not like being surprised. This is an orderly person who holds that one should neither go beyond one’s duties nor fall short of them. Her charity is regulated as if love was an exhaustible treasure. This is our only point of disagreement.
When she saw me that evening returning with the little girl, her first thoughts escaped in this cry, “What have you taken charge of this time?”
As with each time when an explanation was required between us, I asked the children who were there to leave the room. They were open mouthed, full of questions and of surprise. Ah! How this welcome was so far from what I would have wished for. Only my dear little Charlotte began to dance and clap her hands when she understood that something new, something living, was going to get out of the carriage. But the others, who were already styled after their mother, quickly became cold and walked away from her.
There was a moment of great confusion. And since my wife and the children did not yet know that the girl was blind, they could not understand the extreme attention that I was taking to guide her steps. I myself was all upset by the bizarre groans that the poor sick child began to make, so much so that my hand abandoned hers which I had been holding since she got out of the carriage. Her cries were not human. One could say they sounded like plaintive yaps from a little dog. Having been pulled out of the tight circle of customary sensations that formed her entire universe for the first time, her knees yielded underneath her. But when I brought a chair for her to sit on, she let herself collapse to the ground like someone who did not know how to sit. Then I led her into the house, and she calmed down a little bit when she could cuddle up near the fireplace in the same position she had taken in the home of the old woman. In the carriage she had already slipped to the bottom of the seat and had made the entire trip snuggled up against my feet. My wife made an instinctive movement to help me, which I appreciated, but it is true that her logic was always battling and often won out against her heart.
“What do you intend to do with that?” she said after the young girl was in the house.
My soul shivered upon hearing those words employed in such a way, and I had difficulty controlling a movement of indignation. However, still imbibed in my long and peaceful meditation in the carriage, I restrained myself and turned towards all of those who had once again formed a circle, and with my hand posed on the forehead of the blind girl, I said with as much solemnity as I could,
“I am bringing back the lost sheep.”
Amélie would not admit that there could be anything unreasonable about the teachings of the gospel. But I saw that she was going to protest, and it was then that I made a sign to Jacques and to Sarah who, being accustomed to our small conjugal differences, and for the rest hardly curious of their nature (a bit too insufficiently in my opinion), led the two small children out of the room. Then, since I sensed that my wife seemed closed and exasperated in the presence of the intruder, I said,
“You can speak in front of her. The poor child understands nothing.”
Then Amélie started protesting that she certainly had nothing to say to me. This was the habitual prelude to the very longest of explications. She said that there was nothing for her to do but to submit to my impractical and nonsensical inventions as she always did. I have already written that I had hardly thought about what I intended to do with this child. I had only vaguely, if at all, considered the possibility of having her stay in our house, and I can almost say that it was Amélie who gave me the idea when she asked me if I didn’t think that “There were already enough people in the house.” Then she declared that I was always moving ahead without ever bothering to think of the consequences to the rest of the family, that in her opinion five children were enough, that since the birth of Claude (who precisely at that moment, having heard his name, began to scream in his crib) she has “Had enough” and was at the end of her rope.
From the first sentences she spoke, several words of Christ came from my heart to my lips, but I held them in, for it always appeared improper to me to hide my behavior behind the authority of the holy book. But when she began to speak about her fatigue, I remained sheepish because I recognized that more than once I had left my wife to bear the burden and the consequences of my thoughtless zeal. However, these recriminations had educated me about my duty. I therefore very softly begged Amélie to examine if she would not have acted the same way if she had been in my place, and if she thought it was proper to leave in distress a being who clearly had no one else to lean upon.
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