Translations:Victor of Aveyron/22/en

The First Developments of the Young Savage of Aveyron

A child, about eleven or twelve years of age, who had been seen some time before in the woods of Caune, in France, looking after acorns and roots, upon which he subsisted, was met in the same place, towards the close of the year 1798, by three sportsmen, who seized upon him at the instant he was climbing a tree to evade their pursuit. They conducted him to a neighboring village and put him under the care of an aged matron; from whom, however, before the end of a week, he contrived to escape, and fled to the mountains, where he wandered about during the severity of a most rigorous winter, clad only in a tattered shirt. At night lie retired into solitary places, approaching, as the day advanced, the neighboring villages; and in this manner be passed a vagrant kind of life, until the time in which, of his accord, he sought refuge in a dwelling-house in the Canton of St. Sernin. Here he was retained and taken care of for two or three days, and from thence was sent to the hospital of St. Afrique, afterward to Rhodez, where he was kept for several months. During his abode in these different places, he appeared to be always equally wild, impatient of restraint, and capricious in his temper, continually endeavoring to get away, affording materials for the most interesting observations, which were collected by a person worthy of the utmost credit, and which I shall not fail to relate in those parts of the following Essay where they may be most advantageously introduced*.