e face of some terrible catastrophe. And
she had the wonderful patience to wait until eleven o'clock in order
to see what would happen, and as she naturally heard nothing, she was
suddenly either seized with a wild fit of rage at having been deceived
and imposed upon by appearances, or else overcome by that fear which
some frightened creature feels at some terrible mystery, and by the
furious impatience of a passionate individual who meets with some
obstacle; she took up the tongs from the fireplace and struck the clock
so violently that she broke it to pieces in a moment.

"It was evident, therefore, that her, brain did act and calculate,
obscurely it is true, and within very restricted limits, for I could
never succeed in making her distinguish persons as she distinguished
the time; and to stir her intellect, it was necessary to appeal to her
passions, in the material sense of the word, and we soon had another,
and alas! a very terrible proof of this!

"She had grown up into a splendid girl, a perfect type of a race, a sort
of lovely and stupid Venus. She was sixteen, and I have rarely seen such
perfection of form, such suppleness and such regular features. I said
she was a Venus; yes, a fair, stout, vigorous Venus, with large, bright,
vacant eyes, which were as blue as the flowers of the flax plant;
she had a large mouth with full lips, the mouth of a glutton, of a
sensualist, a mouth made for kisses. Well, one morning her father came
into my consulting room with a strange look on his face, and, sitting
down without even replying to my greeting, he said:

"'I want to speak to you about a very serious matter. Would it be
possible--would it be possible for Bertha to marry?'

"'Bertha to marry! Why, it is quite impossible!'

"'Yes, I know, I know,' he replied. 'But reflect, doctor. Don't you
think--perhaps--we hoped--if she had children--it would be a great shock
to her, but a great happiness, and--who knows whether maternity might
not rouse her intellect?'

"I was in a state of great perplexity. He was right, and it was possible
that such a new situation, and that wonderful instinct of maternity,
which beats in the hearts of the lower animals as it does in the heart
of a woman, which makes the hen fly at a dog's jaws to defend her
chickens, might bring about a revolution, an utter change in her vacant
mind, and set the motionless mechanism of her thoughts in motion. And
then, moreover, I immediately remembered a