Letters from my Windmill by Alphonse Daudet

Author:Alphonse Daudet [Daudet, Alphonse]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: France -- Social life and customs -- Fiction
Published: 2009-11-09T16:00:00+00:00

THE MAN WITH THE GOLDEN BRAIN

To the Lady who wants pleasant stories.

I took your letter, madame, as an invitation to change my ways. I have been tempted to shade my little tales a touch too darkly, and I promised myself to give you something joyful, wildly joyful, today.

After all, what have I got to be sad about? Here I am living hundreds of kilometres from the fogs of Paris, on a radiantly beautiful hillside, in the land of the tambourine and Muscat wine. Around my windmill, everything is sunshine and music; I have wind orchestras of wheatears, bands of blue-tits, and choirs of curlews from morning to midday. And the cicadas, and the shepherds playing their fifes, and the dark haired young beauties laughing amongst the vines…. To tell the truth, this is no place for brooding; I'd rather rush rose-coloured poems and basketsful of spicy stories to you ladies.

And yet—I can't. I am still too near to Paris. Every day, even here amongst my precious pines, it finds me with its ink-stained fingers of misery…. Even as I write, I have just heard the lamentable news of the death of poor Charles Barbara, and my windmill is plunged into grief.

Farewell, curlews and cicadas! I haven't the heart for jollity right now… For that reason, madam, instead of the pretty little tale which I had promised, you will only have yet another melancholy story today.

* * * * *

Once, there was a man with a golden brain; yes, madame, a brain made entirely from gold. At birth, the doctors thought he wouldn't survive long, so heavy was his head and so oversized his skull. However, he did live and he thrived in the sunshine like a lovely olive tree. Except that his huge head went everywhere with him and it was pitiful to see him bumping into all the furniture as he walked about the house….

All too often, he would fall down. One day, he fell from the top flight of some marble steps and just happened to catch his head on one. His head rang like an ingot. It could have killed him, but when he got up, there was nothing wrong except there was a small wound with two or three traces of congealed gold in his blond locks. That was how his parents learned that their child had a brain of pure gold.

* * * * *

It was kept a close secret, and the poor little thing himself suspected nothing. Sometimes he would ask why he wasn't allowed to go outside to play with the other boys in the street.

"Someone would steal from you, my treasure!" his mother told him…. Then the little lad, being terrified of being robbed, made no complaint as he went back to playing alone and dragging himself sadly from room to room….It wasn't until he was eighteen years old that his parents told him of this monstrous gift from fate. Since they had nurtured him and fed him all his life, they told him that it was about time he paid them back with some of his gold.

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