"We stopped at a small farmstead and put up a barn for a man. It took us about a week or so, and afterward the man and his family celebrated with us. The family had a small horde of children, all seemingly born nine months and ten minutes apart, but one of them, something had happened to him. I think it was something from birth, but I didn’t ask and anyway, my French wasn’t that good. But the little fellow was enamored with Honoré, sitting in close to him as Honoré sat on a haybale and fiddled, tapping his boot in time to the shuffling of dancers and the music. The little fellow had a misshapen head and odd looking eyes and low ears. His parents tried to pull him away, that poor, ruined boy, so as not to distract Honoré from his music. But Honoré stopped-in the middle of the song- and told them to leave him there, that they were enjoying each other’s company and that he was no trouble. Honoré played until the little boy’s eyes slackened with sleep and his little body slumped against him. Honoré’s violon squealed and crooned, and the boy was oblivious.

When the dance was over, he picked up the child’s limp, slumbering body.

“Pauvre bête [poor thing],” he said, and he kissed the boy on his forehead before giving him over to his mother.

The mother gathered the boy, whose name was Alcee, I believe, but that is no matter now, and she took him in the house and put him in the bed with his siblings. Honoré was putting away his violon. The little boy distressed me. He did.

Can you change him? I thought, but I changed my question. “Can he be changed?” I asked Honoré.

“Not everything must be changed, Pierre. Sometimes things are like they are in hope that the world, or at least a small part of it, will change. In the meantime, this poor boy here is a soul just like you and me. And our souls don’t toil or spin. They got no color, sont pas homme, sont pas femme [they're not male, they're not female]. But make no mistake. They are us. They are more us than we are us.”