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"And if you will wait a little longer you will see the young mother, gazing with the same love at the father and the infant, go to the baby, lift it from the cradle and take it aside to nourish it.

"The explanation is simply that she had given birth to her baby just as her husband was finishing his apprenticeship, that she could not bear to be away from him and contemplated with terror either having to be separated from him or having to wean the little one, and that we concluded that this would be cruel and had the baby brought here, contrary to the rules of all military hospitals, which do not usually accept conscripts of that age.

"And that old, old, woman you see working there, aged by misery, suffering and sorrow; she is the mother of our joyous friend sans hands, and the first time she had smiled in many years was the other day when her son brought her between his two stumps a shawl he had just finished. She smiled, and then she began to cry, saying she was very happy.

"Each one is working at his machine -- a machine which he will take away with him, which he loves already, which he caresses and keeps in good order, which he knows and which will enable him to earn his living.

"And there our ideal is realized.

"The blind man will work in his own home, master of his time and his labor, as a free man -- with the co-operation of his wife. And around him children will grow, happy, under the eyes of their mother and the endearments of their glorious father and increase the number of those of the future, of those who will not experience the horrors through which we have passed, because our soldiers have paid with their eyes the sacrifice that had to be made in order to strangle the beast, to kill war.

"Let us continue our walk. There is still a wing of the structure we have not seen.

"A large stable from which the horses are absent. In their stead big bales wrapped in sacking from which escape whisps of couch grass, tampico, and piazzava. Neatly stacked on tables against the wall are strange objects, pieces of wood cut into queer shapes, pierced with small holes at regular intervals, and above each kind are labels which set one to thinking: Violins, crawfish, washerwomen, casks, &c.

"By the door, in a little corner which the large opening onto the sunlit garden renders more shadowy, is a small table loaded with tally sheets, papers of various kinds, and delivery books.

"From here are sent every day hundreds of kilos of couch grass and thousands of pieces of shaped wood for brushes, carefully packed, which go to the four corners of France, to humble dwellings, furnishing to blinded soldiers returned home after re-education the materials they could not procure themselves, at wholesale prices and with a credit that they could not obtain elsewhere.

"While I am on the subject of credit I cannot resist the pleasure of relating a detail which will give to those who do not know our French peasants an idea of their probity.

"Our losses from unpaid bills are less than 3 per cent. And we never refuse a first delivery on credit -- nor other deliveries either.

"Nothing is more touching. I assure you, than to receive the money order that a blind man sends. Sometimes turn and turn in my hands, with emotion, this money order for 100 francs, for 200 francs occasionally, which comes from some out-of-the-way village and is the proof of such great energy and honesty. I gaze at it with respect.

"Now, we will return to the Superior School, of which we have seen only the outside.

"We ascend a large stone stairway, a copy of that of some historic chateau of Touraine, and we reach first a terrace where more open air classes are being held, then penetrate into an interior where reigns the tac-tac of typewriting machines, where commercial orders find a clearing house and where secretaries bent over books keep our accounts. Let us enter this room.

"A visitor is discussing business animatedly with another gentleman. Both are in military uniform, but this no longer occasions surprise. We have happened upon a dealer who is receiving offers of service from the representative of a food products concern. Each defends his interests keenly. The salesman gives his prices, lauds his merchandise, enlivens the interview with an anecdote, solicits, urges, persuades. His firm is certainly the best in France and his products the cheapest possible. He replies to a complaint from the dealer about a delayed order. It is the fault of the railroad. The damage will be made good. It won't occur again. The dealer gives an order. The offer of a small discount and facility of payment cause him to double it. The salesman makes a note of it, but instead of writing it down with a pencil in a notebook he makes holes rapidly with a punch in a sheet of paper stretched upon a tablet of aluminium.

"The salesman is a blind soldier who is writing in Braille; the dealer is a professor of commercial law and it is at a practical lesson that we have been assisting. In another room a blind man at a typewriter is taking down words from a talking machine into which the employer in the morning had dictated his correspondence.