A doctor in some county in England took her in towards the middle of the last century. Her name was Laura Bridgeman. This doctor kept a journal, as you should do, recording the progress of the child, or at the least the techniques he used to instruct her at the very beginning of the process. For days and weeks he persisted in having her touch and feel alternatively two small objects, a pin and then a pen, and then he had her touch a paper which had these two English words, pin and pen, printed in Braille. For some weeks he got no result. Her body seemed uninhabited. But he never lost confidence. He said that he felt like someone who was bent over the edge of a deep, black pit, moving a rope around haphazardly in the hope that someone at the bottom would grab the end of it. He never doubted for an instant that someone was there at the bottom of the chasm, and that sooner or later it would be seize. And then one day, finally, he saw the impassable face of Laura light up with a smile. I think that at that time tears of recognition and love poured from his eyes, and he fell to his knees to thank God. Laura suddenly understood what the doctor wanted from her. She was saved! From that day on she paid attention, and her progress was rapid. Soon she could even instruct herself, and eventually she became the director of an institute for blind people. Or maybe that was someone else, because other cases have been presented recently, and they have been discussed at length in magazines and newspapers with each one wondering more than the other, a bit foolishly in my opinion, if such creatures could be happy. For it is a fact. Each one of these walled up people were happy, and as soon as they could begin to express themselves, they spoke about their happiness. Naturally the journalists were ecstatic, and they took from this a lesson for those who were “enjoying” all of their five senses and who nonetheless had the nerve to complain.”

 

This was followed by a discussion between Martins and me, because I rebelled a bit about what I perceived to be pessimism on his part. I could not agree that the senses, as he seemed to imply, only served to cause sadness.

 

“That is not what I meant,” he protested. “I simply mean that the soul of man more easily and readily recognizes beauty, ease, and harmony than disorder and sin, which everywhere tarnishes, degrades, and stains this world, and that the five senses help us recognize this fact. How happy men would be if they did not know evil!”

 

Then he spoke to me about a tale of Dickens that he believed had been directly inspired by the example of Laura Bridgeman and which he promised to send me a copy of right away. And four days later I received The Cricket of the Foyer which I read with intense pleasure. It is a story, a bit long and a bit pathetic in some parts, of a young blind person whose father, just a poor toymaker, maintained for him the allusion that they lived in comfort, wealth, and happiness. This was a lie that the art of Dickens strives to pass off as pious, but which, thank God! I will not have to use with Gertrude.

 

On the day after Martins came to see me, I began to put his method to use and did my best to apply it. I regret right now that I did not take notes, as he advised me to do, of the first steps of Gertrude on this uncertain road where I was guiding her at first only gropingly. In those first weeks it took more patience than one would have believed, not only because of the time this initial education demanded, but also of the reproaches that it caused me to encounter. It is painful to me to have to say that these reproaches came from Amélie. If I speak about it here it is not that I hold any animosity or bitterness. I solemnly attest to it for the case where she might read these pages some day. (Did Christ not teach us about giving pardon for offenses immediately after the parable of the lost sheep?) I will say more.