Full resolution (JPEG) - On this page / på denna sida - XV. John
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a request to find out if a blue-eyed boy about
three years old were among the adoptive children
in their villages. After a long delay I received
negative answers from two of the maires, no
answer from the third. I then wrote to the three
curés of these villages and after months of waiting
the curé of Villeroy informed me that he had
discovered with a shoemaker’s wife a little boy who
might answer to my description. He had arrived
from Paris three years ago and certainly he had
blue eyes.
I had never been in Normandy, it was Christmas
time and I thought I deserved a little holiday.
It was actually on Christmas day I knocked at
the door of the shoemaker. No answer. I
entered a dusky room with the shoemaker’s low
table by the window, muddy and worn-out boots
and shoes of all sizes strewn over the floor, some
newly washed shirts and petticoats were hanging
to dry on a rope across the ceiling. The bed had
not been made up, the sheets and the blankets
looked indescribably dirty. On the stone floor
of the evil-smelling kitchen sat a half-naked little
child eating a raw potato. He gave me a
terrified look from his blue eyes, dropped his potato,
lifted instinctively his emaciated arm as if to
avoid a blow and crawled as fast as he could into
the other room. I caught him up just as he was
creeping under the bed and sat down at the
shoemaker’s table by the window to examine his
teeth. Yes, the boy was about three years and a
half I should say, a little skeleton with emaciated
arms and legs, a narrow chest and a stomach
blown up to twice its proper size. He sat
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