seemed to enclose him like a horrible wall. If he could have fled from

all things, he would have done so. But children know nothing of that

breaking from prison which is called suicide. He was running. He ran on

for an indefinite time; but fear dies with lack of breath.

All at once, as if seized by a sudden accession of energy and

intelligence, he stopped. One would have said he was ashamed of running

away. He drew himself up, stamped his foot, and, with head erect, looked

round. There was no longer hill, nor gibbet, nor flights of crows. The

fog had resumed possession of the horizon. The child pursued his way: he

now no longer ran but walked. To say that meeting with a corpse had made

a man of him would be to limit the manifold and confused impression

which possessed him. There was in his impression much more and much

less. The gibbet, a mighty trouble in the rudiment of comprehension,

nascent in his mind, still seemed to him an apparition; but a trouble

overcome is strength gained, and he felt himself stronger. Had he been

of an age to probe self, he would have detected within him a thousand

other germs of meditation; but the reflection of children is shapeless,

and the utmost they feel is the bitter aftertaste of that which, obscure

to them, the man later on calls indignation. Let us add that a child has

the faculty of quickly accepting the conclusion of a sensation; the

distant fading boundaries which amplify painful subjects escape him. A

child is protected by the limit of feebleness against emotions which are

too complex. He sees the fact, and little else beside. The difficulty of

being satisfied by half-ideas does not exist for him. It is not until

later that experience comes, with its brief, to conduct the lawsuit of

life. Then he confronts groups of facts which have crossed his path;

102

The Man Who Laughs