Letters From My Windmill by Alphonse Daudet, Frederick Davies

that I couldn't stop myself laughing. The
Arctic-cold response came immediately: "If you think I'm joking …
just look into my eyes."
    He then turned two large, white, sightless eyes towards me: "I've gone
blind, my dear, blind for life…. That's what comes from writing with
vitriol. I have burned out the candle of my eyes out doing the damned
job … to the stub!" he added showing me his desiccated eyelids with
no trace of an eyelash.
    I was so overcome, I couldn't find anything to say. My silence troubled
him:
    "Are you working?"
    —No, Bixiou, I'm having lunch. Would you like to join me?"
    He didn't reply, but I could see clearly from his quivering nostrils
that he was dying to say yes. I took his hand and sat him down beside
me.
    While I served him, the poor devil sniffed at the food and chuckled:
    "Oh, it smells good, this. I'm really going to enjoy it; and it will be
an age before I eat again! A sou's worth of bread every morning, as I
traipse through the ministries, is all I get…. I tell you, I'm really
badgering the ministries now—it's the only work I do—I am trying to
get permission to run a tobacconist's shop…. What else can I do; I've
got to eat. I can't draw; I can't write… Dictation?… But dictate
what?… I haven't a clue, me; I can't think of a thing to write. My
trade was to look at the lunacies of Paris and hold a mirror up to
them; but I haven't got what it takes now…. Then I thought about a
tobacconist's shop; not in the boulevards of course, I can't expect
those kind of favours, being neither a show girl's mother, nor a field
officer's widow. No. I'm just looking for a small shop in the
provinces, somewhere far away, say a spot in the Vosges. I will sell a
hell of a clay pipe, and console myself by wrapping tobacco in my
contemporaries' writings.
    "That's all I want. Not too much to ask, is it? But, do you know what,
its hell on earth to get it… Yet, I shouldn't be short of patronage.
I have soared high in my time. I used to dine with the Marshal, the
prince, and ministers, all those people wanted me then because I amused
them—or frightened them. Now, no one does. Oh, my eyes! my poor, poor
eyes! I'm not welcome anywhere, now. It's unbearable being blind at
meal times…. Do pass me the bread, please…. Oh, those thieves! They
will make me pay through the nose for this damned tobacconist's shop.
I've been wandering through all the ministries clutching my petition,
for the last six months. I go in the morning at the time they light the
stoves and take His Excellence's horse around the sanded courtyard, and
I don't leave until night when they bring in the big lights and the
kitchens begin to smell really good….
    "All my life is spent sitting on the wooden chests in the antechambers.
The ushers know who I am, as well—enough said. Inside the court they
call me That kind man! So, to get them on my side, to amuse them, I
practise my wit, or, in a corner of their blotters, I draw rough
caricatures without taking the pen off the page…. See what I've come
to after twenty years of outstanding success; look at just what an
artist's life amounts to!… And to think there are forty thousand
rascals in France who slobber over our work! To think that throughout
Paris, every day, locomotives make steam to bring us loads of idiots
thirsting for waffle and printed gossip!… Oh, what a world of
fantasists. If only Bixiou's suffering could teach them a lesson."
    With that, and without another word, he pushed his face towards the
plate and began to scoff the food…. It was pitiful to look at. He was
losing his bread, and his fork, and groping for his glass all the
time…. Poor soul! He just hadn't had the time to get used to it all
yet.
    * * * * *
    After a short time, he spoke again:
    "Do you know what's even worse? It's not being able to read the damned
newspapers. You have to be in the trade to understand that….
Sometimes at night, when I am coming home, I buy one just for the smell
of the