THE READING FINGERS

Jean Roblin

Chapter X: 1852—1952

THE MAN who, during thirty years of patient research, had done more for the blind than eight centuries of charity and alms, died ignored by his contemporaries, without ostentation or glory, but simply, as he had lived. No one had had a presentiment of the worldwide significance of his work; no one, apart from his very restricted circle of friends, had noticed that at forty-three had died the deliverer of millions of beings formerly doomed to ignorance who today, because of him, are able to attain the highest pinnacles of culture.

We have looked in vain in the newspapers of the time for some article announcing his death. That day there was mention of the banquet at the Hôtel-de-Ville which the Prince-President, Louis Napoleon Bonaparte, was to attend. Lamartine announced that his paper, Le Conseiller du Peuple, would cease publication, to be replaced by a literary paper, L'Humanité. The candidature of Monsieur Alfred de Musset to the French Academy was being criticized, but no one spoke of Braille, not even in the obituary columns.

A hundred years later, however, overflowing the too narrow confines of our country, the fame of the boy of fifteen who had bestowed upon his blind brothers the wonderful six-dot system has spread over the entire world. As long ago as 1878, a congress met at Paris and decided to adopt braille as an international system of writing for the blind. In 1917 America, which had for many years used derivative alphabets, brought about unity by compelling recognition of Braille's original alphabet. In 1950 on the initiative of UNESCO, the braille system was extended to a substantial number of African dialects. This great organization is now working for the application of the alphabet to oriental languages.

It is, therefore, on an international scale that men ought to honor Louis Braille, for he is one of the great benefactors of the world, and his name, unknown in 1852, will join those of Pasteur, Reed and Fleming, united by the same universal gratitude.

We lived several months in Coupvray close to the house where Louis Braille was born, soaking up the peaceful life of this little town, unearthing pages yellowed with age from dusty archives in the town garret, and bringing back to life people of days gone by whom the blind child had known. Very often our steps turned toward his house, so simple, so full of memories still. Often, too, climbing the Touarte we found ourselves in the cemetery before his grave, a poor grave and plain, where the blind of the whole world come to meditate and give thanks to their deliverer. It occurred to us that between the beginning and end, between the house where he was born and this final resting place of his, there was a tragedy and a deliverance, a life of courage and of struggle against darkness, the amazing disproportion between his humble origins and the magnitude of his achievement.

Louis Braille was the apostle of light. If it is true that above all posterity remembers the work of a man extraordinarily persevering and methodical, with a prodigious power of concentration, we must yet recognize that not only did he have the mind of an inventor but also the soul of a saint; and to our eyes this latter is the most significant aspect of his life. In spite of the accident which blinded him at the age of four, in spite of the long battle to obtain acceptance of his system, in spite of the malady which sapped his strength from within, he never grew bitter, he never despaired. He remained good, charitable, loving, faithful to his friends as to his ideals. Thus live the virtuous and pure in heart. Thus do we see, undimmed by a century since his death, the true Louis Braille.