Notwithstanding the sadness with which the sight of the lunatics had inspired her, Madame George could not but stop for a moment before a railed court, where the incurable idiots were confined. Poor beings! who often have not even the instinct of the beast, and whose origin is almost always unknown--unknown to all as well as to themselves. Thus they pass through life, absolute strangers to the affections, to thoughts, experiencing only the most limited animal wants. If madness does not reveal itself at once to a superficial observer by a single inspection of the physiognomy of the lunatic, it is but too easy to recognize the physical character of idiotism. Dr. Herbin had no occasion to direct the attention of Madame George, to the expression of savage brutishness, stupid insensibility, or imbecile amazement, which gave to the features of the unfortunate wretches an expression at once hideous and painful to behold. Almost all were clothed in long dirty frocks, ragged and torn; for, in spite of all possible care, these beings, absolutely deprived of instinct and reason, cannot be prevented from tearing and soiling their vestments, crawling and rolling like beasts in the mire of the courts, where they remain during the day. Some of them, crouched in the most obscure corners of a shed which sheltered them, gathered in a heap, like animals in their dens, uttered a kind of hollow and continual rattling noise. Others, leaning against the wall immovable, looked fixedly at the sun. An old man, of monstrous obesity, seated on a wooden chair, devoured his pittance with animal voracity, casting on either side oblique angry glances. Some walked rapidly, describing a circle, limiting themselves to a very small space. This strange exercise would last for entire hours. Seated on the ground, others swayed their bodies continually backward and forward, only interrupting this movement of vertiginous monotony by shouts of laughter--the guttural, harsh laugh of idiocy. Others, in fine, were almost in a state of annihilation, only opening their eyes at the moment of repast, remaining inert, inactive, deaf, dumb, blind--not a cry, not a gesture announcing their vitality. The complete absence of verbal or intellectual communication is one of the most gloomy characteristics of a company of idiots, Lunatics, notwithstanding the incoherency of their words and thoughts, at least speak, know each other, and seek each other; but among idiots there reigns a stupid indifference, an isolated savageness. Never do they pronounce an articulate word. Sometimes is heard among them savage laughter, or groans and cries which resemble nothing human. Scarcely can a few among them recognize their keepers; and yet, let us repeat it with admiration, with reverence to the Creator, these unfortunate creatures, who seem no longer to belong to our species, and not even to the animal species, by the complete annihilation of their intellectual