The record-union., 1896-12-13
THE MOON STRICKEN.

little village off the great Chamonix
road, L became acquainted with Mad
anne Barblere and her idiot son-an old
tale, and with fantastic sequel. l
wonder VIII any one give credit to it
and an earnest hearing? The little rec
ora mas Tor long years moldered in my
oeSk; ana OF late years it has grown
UP IN my mind that maybe~I am spared
as once / never thought to be-that l
may cite my strange experiences as a
certain menace dictated from that "un-
known bourne" it was once my fate to
little overstep
And if this revelation of a long with
held secret is to prove my death-war-
rant? Better SO than this living con-
Sciousness that L am writ down an in
spired madman.
Therefore l take up the tale abruptly
at certain point in the old faded man.
uscript
The soul of Camille Barbiere, the i'd
lot, had warped long after it's earthly
tabernacle had grown firm and fair
to look upon. Cause and effect were not
one from birth in him; and the result
was most wistful expression, as
though the lost intellect We're forever
struggling and failing to recall its an
young man. with one simple instinct of
duty-to drive the goats to pasture on
the mountain slopes; where all day long
he would sit among the rhododendrons,
the forgotten soul behind his eyes con-
ming the dead language of fate, as a
foreigner vainly interrogates the alb
struse complexity of an idiom.
By and by l made it an irregular
habit to accompany him on these shep-
herdings-inasmuch as he awakened an
interest in me that was full of specula-
ton. For his was not an imbecility
either hereditary or constitutional
From the first there had appeared to be
something abnormal in it-a suspension
of intelligence only-a froSt-bite in the
brain that presently some April breath
of memory might thaw out. This was
not merely conjectural, of course.
had the story of his mental collapse
from his mother in the early days of my
sojourn in Bel -Oiseau-for it came to
PASS that a fitful instinct induced me
to prolong my stay in the swart little
village far into the gracious Swiss sum-
mer.
The STORY I have called it; but i
was none. He was out on the hills one
moonlight night some eight years be-
fore my knowledge of him, and came
home in the early morning mad. That
was all.
They had thought him possessed of
a devil, and had sought to exercise it;
but the devil remained and rent him
with periodic convulsions of insanity.
1t was noted that his arrangement
waxed and waned with the monthly
moon: that it assumed a virulent char
IL, Of 1a \
quarter, and eliminated in species
of delirium, during which it was nee
essary to carefully watch him; that it
diminished with the lessening crescent
until it fell away into a quiet allegiance
of faculties that was but a step apart
from the normal intelligence of his
kind.
When he was 20 his father died, and
Camille and his mother had to make
out existence in company
Now the veil, in my first knowledge
of him, was never rent; yet occasionally
it seemed to me to cape in manner
that let q little momentary finger of
light through, in the flashing of which
a soul kindled and shut in his eyes, like
a spark in ashes.
He was not always thus?' I would
say to Madame Barbiere.
But no, monsieur. truly. This place
--bahi we are here imbeciles all to the
great world, without doubt; but, Ca
mile! he was by nature of those who
make the history of cities-a rose in
the wilderness. Monsieur sniles?"
by no means. a scholar, madame"
"A scholar of nature, monsieur;
dreamer Of dreams such as they be-
come who walk much with the spirits
on the lonely mountains"
Torrents and avalancheS and the
good material forces of nature, madame
means
"Ah, Monsieur may talk, but he
knows He has heard the fohn sweep
down from the hills and spin the great
stones off the house-roofs. And one may
look and see nothing, yet the stones go
1t is the wind that runs before the
avalanche that snaps the pine trees;
and the wind is the spirit that calls
down the snowslipS.'
But how may madame, who sees
nothing. know then a spirit to be
abroad?"
MY faith: one may know ones foot
is on the wild mint without shifting
ones sole to look
Madame viii pardon me. No doubt
also one may know a spirit by the smell
of sulphur"
Monsieur is a skeptic. 1t comes with
the knowledge of cities. There are even
such in little Bel-Oiseau, since the evil
time when they took to engrossing the
contracts of good citizens on the skins
of the poor jew-beards that give us
flesh and milk. 1t is horrible as the
Tannery Of Meudon. In my young days.
monsieur. such agreements were in
scribed upon wood"
quite so, madame. But for his fall
it was always unaccountable?"
Monsieur, as one trips on the edge
of a. crevasse and disappears. His soul
dropped into the frozen cleft that one
cannot fathom.'
Madame will forgive my curiosity"
"Rlrt surely There was no dark se-
cret in my Camille's life. Moreover. It
IS that I willingly recount this grief to
the wise friend that may know solu-
ton"
At another time Madame Barbiere
said:
"It was in such parched summer as
this threatens to be that my Camille
came home in the mists of the morning.
possessed. He was often out on the
sweet hills all night-that was nothing.
II had been a full moon. and the white
ness OF II was on his face like leprosy-
but his hands were hot with fever. All,
the dreadful summer, The milk turned
sour i'm the cows udders and the tufts
of the stone pines on the mountains
fell into ashes like Dead Sea fruit. The
ft1,ss-