At table we had a long conversation. The man had always been blind. I asked him if he could perceive difference among colours. No. But he was able, at least, to tell without fear of making a mistake, whether the weather was clear or cloudy, dull or pleasant. He was extremely sensitive to differences of texture. I placed a rose in his hand and asked him what it was. Without hesitation and without raising the flower to his nostrils he replied: “It is a rose.” Almost immediately, grasping it gently in his fingers, he added: “It is a beautiful one, too, this rose, very beautiful.” A little more and he would have told me whether it was a _La France_, a _Maréchal Niel_, or some other species of rose. As he had used the word “beautiful” I asked him what seemed to him the most beautiful thing in the world. “The most beautiful thing alive is woman.” I then asked him who the person was in whose company I had found him. His voice took on a tender tone as he said: “It is my wife, my dear wife.” After that I looked with more attention at the self-effacing and almost dumb soul who accompanied the blind musician. Confused, embarrassed, she had lowered her eyes, which she kept obstinately fixed upon an apron, of a faded blue, on which the patches appeared to be more extensive than the original material. She was unattractive, poor thing, and at least twenty years older than her companion. Quietly, without concerning myself with the beseeching looks the poor woman cast at me from under wrinkled and reddened eyebrows, I asked the blind musician: “She satisfies you, does she?” “Certainly.” “You find her beautiful?” “Very beautiful.” “More beautiful than other women?” As he had peopled his darkness with beauty my optimist replied: “I do not say that, for all women are beautiful. But she is better, yes, better than most of them, and it is that which, in my sight, constitutes the purest beauty.” “What makes you think she is better than the others?” “Oh, everything. Her whole life, her whole manner of existence as regards me.” And in words so convincing that for a moment I felt that he could see, he added: “Just look at her, my good lady. Isn’t it a fact that goodness is written on her face?” The woman, with her eyes lowered, kept looking at her blue apron. I then asked the blind man how he had made his living up to this time, and how they had become acquainted, he and his companion.