s eyes. He would give utterance to them in
improvisations wherein his genius triumphed over the uncouthness of his
language, but he could never repeat what he had once said. One would
have had to take it down from his dictation, and even that would have
been of no use to him; for, supposing he had managed to read it, his
memory, accustomed to occupy itself solely with thoughts, had never been
able to retain any fragment whatever in its precise words. And yet he
was fond of quoting, and at times his language was almost biblical.
Beyond, however, certain expressions that he loved, and a number of
short sentences that he found means to make his own, he remembered
nothing of the pages which had been read to him so often, and he always
listened to them again with the same emotion as at first. It was a
veritable pleasure to watch the effect of beautiful poetry on this
powerful intellect. Little by little the abbe, Edmee, and subsequently
I myself, managed to familiarize him with Homer and Dante. He was so
struck by the various incidents in the _Divine Comedy_ that he could
give an analysis of the poem from beginning to end, without forgetting
or misplacing the slightest detail in the journey, the encounters, and
the emotions of the poet. There, however, his power ended. If he essayed
to repeat some of the phrases which had so charmed him when they were
read, he flung forth a mass of metaphors and images which savoured of
delirium. This initiation into the wonders of poetry marked an epoch
in the life of Patience. In the realm of fancy it supplied the action
wanting to his real life. In his magic mirror he beheld gigantic combats
between heroes ten cubits high; he understood love, which he himself had
never known; he fought, he loved, he conquered; he enlightened nations,
gave peace to the world, redressed the wrongs of mankind, and raised
up temples to the mighty spirit of the universe. He saw in the starry
firmament all the gods of Olympus, the fathers of primitive humanity. In
the constellations he read the story of the golden age, and of the ages
of brass; in the winter wind he heard the songs of Morven, and in the
storm-clouds he bowed to the ghosts of Fingal and Comala.

"Before I knew the poets," he said towards the end of his life, "I was
a man lacking in one of the senses. I could see plainly that this
sense was necessary, since there were so many things calling for its
operation. In my solitary walks at night I used t