DOI Seite / Zitierlink:
https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.70302#0321
HISTORY OF THE SAVAGE OF AVEYNON.
285
In some instances, however, the sight of the grand
phenomena of nature appeared to produce sorrow and
melancholy. When the severity of the season had driven
every other person out of the garden, he still delighted to
walk there; after taking many turns he would seat
himself beside a bason of water. Here his convulsive
motions, and the continual balancing of his whole body
diminished, and gradually gave way to a more tranquil
attitude ; his face insensibly assumed the character of
sorrow, or melancholy reverie, while his eyes were sted-
fastly fixed on the surface of the water, and he threw into
it from time to time, some withered leaves. In a moon-
light night, when the rays of that luminary entered his
room, he seldom failed to awake and to place himself at
the window. Here he would remain for a considerable
time motionless, with his neck extended, and his eyes
fixed on the moonlight landscape, and wrapped in a
kind of contemplative extacy, whose silence was inter-
rupted only by profound inspirations accompanied with a
feeble and plaintive sound. To oppose these habits would
have been equally useless and inhuman : on the contrary,
M. Itard wished to associate them with his new mode of
life, in order to make it the more agreeable. He how-
ever endeavoured, and by degrees succeeded in his at-
tempts, to render his excursions less frequent, his meals less
copious, and repeated at longer intervals, the time he
passed in bed much shorter, and his exercise more subser-
vient to his instruction.
The second object of M. Itard was, by means of pow-
erful stimulants, and sometimes by lively affections of
the mind, to awaken the nervous sensibility, which he
seemed at first to possess in a very slight degree. He
has frequently been seen, while amusing himself in the
winter, in the garden of the deaf and dumb, to squat
down half naked on the wet turf, and remain exposed
for
285
In some instances, however, the sight of the grand
phenomena of nature appeared to produce sorrow and
melancholy. When the severity of the season had driven
every other person out of the garden, he still delighted to
walk there; after taking many turns he would seat
himself beside a bason of water. Here his convulsive
motions, and the continual balancing of his whole body
diminished, and gradually gave way to a more tranquil
attitude ; his face insensibly assumed the character of
sorrow, or melancholy reverie, while his eyes were sted-
fastly fixed on the surface of the water, and he threw into
it from time to time, some withered leaves. In a moon-
light night, when the rays of that luminary entered his
room, he seldom failed to awake and to place himself at
the window. Here he would remain for a considerable
time motionless, with his neck extended, and his eyes
fixed on the moonlight landscape, and wrapped in a
kind of contemplative extacy, whose silence was inter-
rupted only by profound inspirations accompanied with a
feeble and plaintive sound. To oppose these habits would
have been equally useless and inhuman : on the contrary,
M. Itard wished to associate them with his new mode of
life, in order to make it the more agreeable. He how-
ever endeavoured, and by degrees succeeded in his at-
tempts, to render his excursions less frequent, his meals less
copious, and repeated at longer intervals, the time he
passed in bed much shorter, and his exercise more subser-
vient to his instruction.
The second object of M. Itard was, by means of pow-
erful stimulants, and sometimes by lively affections of
the mind, to awaken the nervous sensibility, which he
seemed at first to possess in a very slight degree. He
has frequently been seen, while amusing himself in the
winter, in the garden of the deaf and dumb, to squat
down half naked on the wet turf, and remain exposed
for