LESS THAN HUMAN

Little Lotte thought of everything and nothing
Like a butterfly she flew about in the gold of the sun
In her golden curls she wore the crown of spring
And her gaze was like the heavens, so bright blue and clear

She wheedled her mother and was true to her doll
She looked at her clothes and her red shoes
But above them all she loved a little bird
Which her father had captured on the snow last Christmas

It knew her voice and her light step
And thanked its friend with many a lively song.
At the end it sat sad and silent in its cage
It heard spring calling from the green forest

Then it spread it wings and wanted to fly away;
But little Lotte smiled - alas, she understood it not.
She closed the cage securely, she gave it water and seed;
But the bird only wanted freedom, if it was not to die.

One morning she ran early to the bird with food
And laughed loudly on the way and was so delighted;
But, when she came to the cage, then she forgot her song.
The dear bird lay outstretched on the bottom stiff and long.

She took it out carefully and kissed it so tenderly;
But it remained cold and lifeless, - it was not a joke,
Its head sank back, in the eye death lay,
Horrified she let it fall and stared silently at it.

And, at she stood there silent, she became so strange
Before her clear eyes a fog grew
The sweet childhood blush faded from her cheeks
And slowly from her heart a dark pain rose.

She could not know, what this pain was;
But sorrow had written its first rune in her heart
And marked its image deep on her soft features
No longer did it disappear with her last tear

She thought of her mother, but not as lightly as before,
And thus new worlds dawned behind the black veil of grief:
Like a look at the sea from the dark fortress of the coast
So the possibilities of life are revealed by the child's first sorrow.

There is a castle on a cloud,
I like to go there in my sleep,
Aren't any floors for me to sweep,
Not in my castle on a cloud.

What to do? What to say?
Shall you carry our treasure away?
What a gem! What a pearl!
Beyond rubies is our little girl!
How can we speak of debt?
Let's not haggle for darling Cosette!

There is a room that's full of toys,
There are a hundred boys and girls,
Nobody shouts or talks too loud,
Not in my castle on a cloud.

Dear Fantine, gone to rest
Have we done for her child what is best?
Shared our bread. Shared each bone
Treated her like she's one of our own!
Like our own, Monsieur!

There is a lady all in white,
Holds me and sings a lullaby,
She's nice to see and she's soft to touch,
She says "Cosette, I love you very much."

That would quite fit the bill
If she hadn't so often been ill
Little dear, cost us dear
Medicines are expensive, M'sieur
Not that we begrudged a sou
It's no more than we Christians must do!

I know a place where no one's lost,
I know a place where no one cries,
Crying at all is not allowed,
Not in my castle on a cloud.

PROLOGUE

"What a dreadful child!"
Indeed, the more carefully you examine the child's smiling face the more you feel an indescribable, unspeakable horror creeping over you.
You see that it is actually not a smiling face at all.
The boy has not a suggestion of a smile.

But here again the face fails inexplicably to give the impression of belonging to a living human being. He wears a student's uniform and a white handkerchief peeps from his breast pocket.
[...]
And yet somehow it is not the smile of a human being: it utterly lacks substance, all of what we might call the "heaviness of blood" or perhaps the "solidity of human life"--it has not even a bird's weight.
It is merely a blank sheet of paper, light as a feather, and it is smiling.
The picture produces, in short, a sensation of complete artificiality.
Pretense, insincerity, fatuousness--none of these words quite covers it.
And of course you couldn't dismiss it simply as dandyism.
In fact, if you look carefully you will begin to feel that there is something strangely unpleasant about this handsome young man.

This time he is not smiling.
There is no expression whatsoever.
The picture has a genuinely chilling, foreboding quality, as if it caught him in the act of dying as he sat before the camera, his hands held over a heater.

The face is not merely devoid of expression, it fails even to leave a memory.
It has no individuality.
I have only to shut my eyes after looking at it to forget the face.
I can remember the wall of the room, the little heater, but all impression of the face of the principal figure in the room is blotted out;
I am unable to recall a single thing about it.
This face could never be made the subject of a painting, not even of a cartoon.
I open my eyes.
There is not even the pleasure of recollecting: of course, that's the kind of face it was!
To state the matter in the most extreme terms: when I open my eyes and look at the photograph a second time I still cannot remember it.
Besides, it rubs against me the wrong way, and makes me feel so uncomfortable that in the end I want to avert my eyes.

I think that even a death mask would hold more of an expression, leave more of a memory.
That effigy suggests nothing so much as a human body to which a horse's head has been attached.
Something ineffable makes the beholder shudder in distaste.
I have never seen such an inscrutable face on a man.

I think no father under any sky
More fondly loved a daughter than did I,

And scarcely ever has a child been born
Whose loss her parents could more justly mourn.

Unspoiled and neat, obedient at all times,
She seemed already versed in songs and rhymes,

And with a highborn courtesy and art,
Though but a babe, she played a maiden's part.

Discreet and modest, sociable and free
From jealous habits, docile, mannerly,

She never thought to taste her morning fare
Until she should have said her morning prayer;

She never went to sleep at night until
She had prayed God to save us all from ill.

She used to run to meet her father when
He came from any journey home again;

She loved to work and to anticipate
The servants of the house ere they could wait

Upon her parents. This she had begun
When thirty months their little course had run.

So many virtues and such active zeal
Her youth could not sustain; she fell from weal

Ere harvest. Little ear of wheat, thy prime
Was distant; 'tis before thy proper time

I sow thee once again in the sad earth,
Knowing I bury with thee hope and mirth.

For thou wilt not spring up when blossoms quicken
But leave mine eyes forever sorrow-stricken.