RISING UP FROM behind a hill, the hospital at Maréville has as many windows as it does patients; its hundred eyes glitter in the morning sun. For every patient, a window, floating high above his head—too high out of which to climb, or even to gaze. When passing by the hospital, one never sees a crazy face pressed against the pane. One is never made aware of the hundred lives contained within. Yet the feeling persists that the building, so modern and brick and glittering with glass, is animated by a peculiar intelligence, and that while the rest of the world is sleeping, at least one of those eyes is still open, and wakeful, and watching.
The hospital eschews all reminders of its past. Do not call it the madhouse, or the lunatic asylum. Ail that was once dark and hidden and misshapen is now frankly examined in the light that comes streaming, unchecked, through these flashing windows. It is the Institute for the Study of Aberrant Behaviors and Conditions. When Madeleine rings at the front gate, a ruddy, uniformed matron appears, bringing with her the smell of laundry soap, square meals, sanitary practices. Her glance takes in the girl, the photographer, the little wagon brimming with canisters and bellows and bulbs. She spies the crippled hands.
Come in, the matron says. Come in.