THE READING FINGERS

Jean Roblin

Chapter VI: THE TEACHER

ON AUGUST 8, 1828, through Pignier's decision, Braille was officially appointed apprentice teacher with a salary of not more than fifteen francs a month. He was unquestionably gifted with pedagogical qualifications; his conscientiousness, scholarship and patience marked him out for teaching.

At the reopening of school in October the director entrusted him with the grammar, geography and arithmetic classes. One of his young pupils, Coltat, recalls in his Historical Note on Louis Braille how his well-prepared courses captured everyone's attention. "He carried out his duties with so much charm and wisdom that the obligation of attending class was transformed into a real pleasure for his pupils. They competed not only to equal and surpass each other, but also in a touching and constant effort to please a teacher whom they admired as a superior and liked as a wise and well-informed friend, ready with sound advice."

His adaptable and versatile mind was as much at home with the dryness of mathematics as with the colorfulness of geography. He knew how, by turns amusing and entertaining, to interest the most rebellious pupils. He would find the sentence which awakened curiosity, and he would use the most expressive word. He knew all his pupils, watched over their health and comforted them when sorrows troubled their childish calm. He almost never punished a child. In the words of Coltat, "a kind firmness" kept his pupils obedient and respectful.

Louis Braille had just turned twenty. He had remained medium in height, thin, rather graceful and muscular. His head bent forward slightly, his blond hair curled naturally, he had free and easy manners, his features were regular but his pale complexion indicated frail health. His gestures were vivacious and his step was firm and nimble. He wore the uniform of the Institution, a jacket and trousers of black cloth, differentiated from the uniform of the pupils only by trimmings in silk and gold.

He had been called up with the class of 1829 and was represented before the recruiting board by his father. "Exempt, being blind at the Hospital of the Quinze-Vingt,"states the Census List. The column "Education" is marked with "O" which means, "Cannot read or write." Cruel irony for the one who was to endow the blind with an alphabet!

His appointment to the position of apprentice teacher changed his life very little. By tradition the young teachers were thought of merely as big pupils. They were still subject to discipline. Louis could not leave the school without permission; before each visit he had to obtain the consent of the director. When a letter came from Coupvray, the director would tell him of its contents before giving it to him. One wonders at the reasons for such proceedings.

Nevertheless, Braille had a room separate from the pupils' dormitory. If he regretted no longer being able to chat with his friend Gauthier in the evening, he had the quiet necessary for devoting himself to his numerous projects. By means of his alphabet he prepared his courses and began an edition of a treatise on arithmetic. His research on musical notation continued. Let Coltat speak on this subject: "He was gifted with great patience in his endeavors, and with an essentially methodical mind. With the aid of the double light provided by analysis and synthesis and relying on previous efforts at the Institution, Louis took advantage of a particular bent of his mind, that of pursuing the least to arrive at the most by imperceptible but real degrees. His first aim was the notation of the plain song, then that of very simple little tunes. Gradually he came to writing piano music and very complicated scores. Six dots variously combined brought about these wonders."

Pignier, very generously, was particularly concerned about improving the life of the young teachers. He advised them, directed them in their work, invited them to his parties and took them out into society.

In this way Braille first became acquainted with the polite hubbub of a fashionable evening with distinguished people, the innocent chatter, the clinking of glasses at the refreshment table, and the trivial little conversations of dancing parties. He was always asked to play the piano. Complete silence would suddenly come over the audience while the blind young man sat down, searching with tense hands for the keyboard. When his fingers contacted the keys they ran so fast and so nimbly that the astonished audience could not contain its emotion. Braille played Haydn, Mozart and Beethoven equally well. His performance was exact, brilliant, easy, reflecting his personality. Admiring applause would greet his youthful talent. He would return to the Institution late in the evening, escorted by Mademoiselle Pignier, sister of the director, who aided the assistant teachers in the teaching of trades. The crowd intoxicated him, but tired him, too. He was not interested in being the object of an admiration mixed with a little pity. He gladly returned to the solitude of his own room.

On May 31, 1831 his brother arrived at the Institution with sorrowful news. Their father had just died. Until the last Simon René Braille had spoken of his blind son and worried about his future. He had even wished to write Dr. Pignier. It was this letter, dictated by a dying man that Louis's brother brought with him. It was a moving letter, in which the old father commended his young son to the director and asked him never to forsake him. It is Pignier himself, who tells this detail in his Historical Note on Three Blind Teachers in the Institution. He adds, "It was a sacred bequest made to the Director of the Institution which the latter accepted in advance."

The two brothers left for Coupvray in the afternoon. There was a stage-coach leaving the Gate of the Trone at six o'clock. It was not a gay trip like those Louis had taken each year in the glow of a new vacation. He let himself drift toward sad thoughts while the memory of their father filled the silence. Sometimes Louis asked questions. Had he suffered? Had he mentioned him? Night was falling when the first houses of Coupvray appeared. The countryside had the mildness of spring. They had arrived.

In his mother's arms Louis let the tears come at last. On the bed in the alcove Simon René Braille was sleeping his last sleep. The smell of wax filled the little room. Marie Céline and Monique Catherine were there, and Louis heard their sobs. He went to kneel near his father. A witness of his first youth had just gone away, and the young man tried to remember his face.

The family spent the night in prayer, and the next morning the harness-maker of Coupvray was carried to the church. Almost all the village had come to show its respect to the relatives of the old craftsman. Louis, who was very proud of his father, knew how much he was beloved in Coupvray. It was a consolation to think that he had left only good memories and saddened friends behind him. The Abbé Gallet chanted the absolution. Louis added his fervent prayers. For the first time he realized how terrible it is never to see again those whom you love. After the sad procession to the cemetery the grave was blessed; the family received their friends' condolences and returned in a silence heavy with grief to the little house where a good honest man had lived for more than sixty years.

Ten months after Simon René Braille's death an epidemic of cholera which had just ravaged America, London and Calais broke out ferociously in Paris, and soon spread to twenty-seven departments. A great panic seized the population. Rumors went about of organized poisoning, the work of mysterious criminals and the authorities had a great deal of trouble in taking the urgent measures necessitated by the circumstances.

In Coupvray two hundred people needed aid, and at the beginning of April 1832 a letter notified Louis Braille that his sister, Monique Catherine, the wife of Jean François Carron, was feeling the first symptoms of the terrible disease. Monsieur and Madame d'Orvilliers hurriedly organized aid for the unfortunate. They stored medicine and clothing with the Abbé Hussey who from the beginning of the epidemic had given of himself unstintingly, cared for the sick at home, helped the doctors, and brought the comfort of his presence and his valuable advice. Monsieur d'Orvilliers may well have been a victim of his devotion. On April 30, 1832 he died at his residence in Paris, 12 Rue Basse du Rempart. A few days earlier he had been in Coupvray joining with the others in the fight to aid the sick and check the scourge. Undoubtedly cholera had savagely overwhelmed the former aristocrat. He was a great man who had never scorned the humble despite the nobility and prestige of his name.

The epidemic, which claimed thirty-two victims in Coupvray, spared the Braille family, for beginning with September 1832 the name of Monique Catherine Carron is found on the list of convalescents. It seems likely that Louis Braille did not come that year to his native village to spend his vacation, since traveling increased the risk of contagion. He probably kept busy with his research in Paris and postponed until later the joy of seeing his family and friends in Coupvray. At this time there were two other blind persons in Coupvray. We think that Louis Braille knew about them and went to visit them during his vacations, perhaps trying to teach them his system of writing in raised dots.

Pignier had had the idea of introducing sighted students into the school. He thought he could make able and loyal supervisors of them later. This sometimes happened. Every Sunday morning one of the young sighted students at the Institution would accompany Braille to the church. At first he had regretted being present at the Mass less as a believer than as an organist. He had no desire to be part of the scenery, and to represent only the technical side of the ceremony. Braille wanted to share in and live the Mass. Gradually he became experienced enough to be less absorbed by his playing. With a freer mind and in constant communion with the voice of the priest, Braille made his playing more moving still.

Here, in speaking of his faith, we come across one of the most outstanding sides of his personality. His blindness had not made him rebellious. He did not curse God. He accepted his fate with tranquil resignation. He realized that it was only the first act in a destiny whose ending is not acted upon earth. Deprived of the light of the world, he trustfully took refuge in the light of his faith. Toward the end, his life bordered on saintliness.

In 1833 Pignier took advantage of a visit by Thiers to the Institution and requested that some of his students be raised to the rank of the regular teacher. Braille, Gauthier and Coltat received this promotion. From then on their annual salary was 300 francs.

The years passed, and Louis enjoyed life more and more. He saw in his task of teaching and in his unceasing efforts to improve his invention justification for his life. Thanks to Pignier he had been able to demonstrate his system at the Exposition of Industry of 1834. Opened on May 1 in a building constructed on the Place de la Concorde, it was inaugurated by Louis-Philippe, who visited at length and in detail the galleries of the exposition, finding a flattering word for everyone.

In a melancholy period when Vigny wept for his Eva, Lamar-tine for his Elvire, and when Hugo mingled his cries with those of Olympio, in a world where the intellectual elite delighted in the dissection of its woes, Braille, though he had sufficient reason, did not linger over his sufferings. On the contrary, his methodical and constructive mind pushed him to escape from physical limitations. He was a stranger to idleness; his life flowed on full and varied. His courses and his research hardly left him time for introspection. His frail health grew no better, but he disliked losing precious moments in thinking about himself.

For months he had felt great fatigue. Sometimes the stairway of the Institution seemed interminable: he would have to stop, short of breath. On some days he had dizzy spells. Then his head felt heavy and feverish. He would try to pull himself together and think no more about it, but illness persistently and stubbornly crept over him. An observant friend noticed the pallor of his face and his prominent red cheek-bones. Fever was secretly undermining him. He woke up in the morning as tired as when he had gone to bed, and his restless sleep kept him from recovering his expended strength. Often during his classes he had to stop talking; he would be exhausted and his chest would feel tight.

Louis Braille who was then only twenty-six (it was 1835), did not like to think that illness was imminent. He thought his pains were fleeting and would soon disappear. He stubbornly forced himself to continue his usual full teaching program.

However, one night as fever kept him awake he suddenly felt his mouth fill with a liquid which left him no illusions. It was blood! Then he realized the seriousness of his condition and called out. The night supervisor came and left again in a panic to look for the director.

Dr. Pignier quickly understood the catastrophe. Diagnosis was simple. Louis had been the victim of a hemorrhage due to a lung lesion. It was tuberculosis in its first stage.

What could Dr. Pignier do to combat this encroaching disease? In 1835 medical research left the patients with no hope for a cure. One had to be content with prolonging their lives by ineffectual measures against this terrible bacillus. Moreover, it was not known then that tuberculosis was of bacillary origin. Pignier ordered rest and plenty of food. Braille should have had the fresh air of the mountains. The Institution itself, damp and unhealthy, was far from being an ideal place for a cure. Louis had to live there nine months out of the year, during the school session. The fatherly Pignier, however, asked him to spare himself. Aware of the danger that a too great expenditure of energy meant for Louis, he reduced his work by giving him small classes which required few words and no preparation.

Louis Braille accepted. Nevertheless, he was not afraid of death. His strong piety kept him safe from that great weakness. But he did not want unconcern for his health to turn into a kind of suicide. From then on he took precautions and resolved upon a strictly ordered life. He thought that with time everything would turn out all right. He hoped especially that the open air of Coupvray would restore his health during the next vacation.

The new rhythm of his life left him more leisure and he spent much time with his friends, Gauthier and Coltat. A young sighted student read them the Moniteur. They talked about events and discussed the news. They had friendly conversations in which Braille sometimes demonstrated his talent as a story-teller. He could animate his stories and go imperceptibly from the gay to the serious with that sense of transition so dear to La Bruyère. Sometimes he would joke, flinging out witty remarks and even resort to pointed epigrams. Some of his expressions were famous among his friends and soon became proverbial.

Coltat says that "with him friendship was a conscientious duty as well as a tender sentiment. He would have sacrificed everything to it—his time, his health and his possessions." He cultivated it as a careful horticulturist would a rare orchid. And it is surely to his credit that he attached so much importance to a sentiment which some rank above love.

Coltat continues, "He wanted the objects of his friendship to profit from it. Thus, he was watchful of their conduct, and often inspired them with firm and brilliant counsels. If the others showed understandable hesitation or reluctance to give what he considered important though painful advice to a mutual friend, he would laugh and say, 'Come, I'll sacrifice myself ' Once he had resolved to do something he would carry it through conscientiously. It did not matter whether the task was pleasant or unpleasant, but only whether it was useful. He handled such delicate matters so often that the expression 'Come, I'll sacrifice myself, became known as his, and his friends had fun in nicknaming him 'the Censor.'

"The remarkable soundness of his mind, the correctness of his judgment and the acuteness of his intelligence enabled him to foresee the train and consequences of events; as a result, there were few among those who knew him well who did not follow his advice and consider it excellent.

"But Louis Braille did not confine himself to the happy influence of his words. He followed them up with action and devotion. He liked to do a good turn and help the unfortunate. When he did so, he acted with such simplicity and delicacy that he hid, so to speak, the hand of the benefactor from the recipient of his kindness. He knew that it is not enough to give, but that it must be done with that spirit of Christian charity which respects the dignity of the human soul in the person of the poor."

Louis Braille was inventive and stubborn and even on medical advice would not give up his fascinating research. He was made for work, and nothing could stop his creative vigor. In 1836, at the request of Hayter, an Englishman, he added the letter "W" to his alphabet. In 1837 he published a new edition of his Method of Writing Words, Music and Plain Songs by Means of Dots, for Use by the Blind. About this time he became interested in a new problem, that of written communication between the blind and the seeing. His system of embossed dots was of no use in such a situation, for it required an apprenticeship on the part of the seeing. What was needed was a method which permitted the blind to write by means of the normal system of the seeing. Several solutions had already occurred to him, but he eliminated some as being unsatisfactory. He relied in his research on the following fundamental principle, the blind in writing need a regulator with which they can ascertain perfectly dimensions and distances without any discontinuity.