Robinson’s failed attempt to murder Grandma Henrouille leaves him blind and reverses the roles the plot was meant to impose: the intended victim survives, the hired accomplice is incapacitated, and the household must keep him while hiding its own complicity.

The Arrangement

The scheme takes shape through a bargain between Robinson and the Henrouille couple. When Ferdinand Bardamu recognizes the danger, he asks whether Robinson is really going to murder Grandma Henrouille merely to please the daughter-in-law. Robinson denies that he is directly committing murder: he says he is building a rabbit hutch, while the fireworks and whatever follows are for the family to handle. His distinction is a self-serving evasion, since he knows what the contraption is meant to do.

Robinson itemizes his payment: a hundred francs for the wood, two hundred and fifty for his labor, and a thousand more for the idea. He imagines that the story, if properly told, could become a pension in itself. The prospective killing is thus at once a paid arrangement and a possible source of continuing income. Bardamu recognizes that argument is unlikely to stop him, and hesitates to tell him that he considers the plan, in its own way, understandable.

The couple and Robinson have worked out the details together. Because Grandma has begun leaving her shack, they intend to send her to feed the rabbits one evening. Fireworks will be fastened to the hutch door and set to explode when she touches it. Her reputation for madness is meant to make the accident seem foreseeable: the neighbors could be told she had been warned not to approach the rabbits and had ignored the warning. The plan depends not only on the device but on a ready-made account that will make the victim appear responsible for her own death.

The Failure and Its Immediate Consequences

The plan collapses when the rabbit moves as Robinson is fastening the fireworks to the hutch door. The device goes off while he is still connecting it, striking him instead of Grandma. Watching from her shack, she sees the accident unfold; when Bardamu arrives, she is already waiting to accuse the household. Her daughter-in-law summons the doctor, but Grandma confronts him in the hallway and declares that they tried to kill her. The family’s intended explanation has been overturned: the supposed danger to an allegedly unstable old woman has become an injury to the man who was hired to remove her.

Robinson is found upstairs in the couple’s bed, and Grandma makes the blood on the mattress part of her public indictment of the scheme. The daughter-in-law tries to quiet her, chiefly because neighbors might hear. She maintains that she had tried to make Grandma’s life pleasant by urging her to stay with the Sisters, but Grandma insists that this proposed refuge was only another way of sending her away. She names Robinson as the would-be murderer and recounts how she had grown suspicious when she saw him whispering with the couple. Her account turns the household’s secrecy into a spectacle that she controls.

The physical reversal is also a reversal in Grandma’s will to live. The failed attack has nearly killed her, yet she is less subdued than before: the incident revives her, and she savors both her survival and the prospect of tormenting her daughter-in-law with the exposed plot. She insists that she still has both eyes and wants to see her own death, rejecting the assumption that she is already near the end. The scheme designed to make her disappearance look natural instead gives her renewed energy and a powerful position within the household.

For Robinson, the consequences are lasting. The household cannot send him to a hospital without inviting gossip, while returning him to his lodging is considered impossible given his condition. The Henrouilles therefore have to keep him. Bardamu treats the wound, which is jagged and contaminated with dirt, and initially sees no infection; he expects scarring of the corneas that may obstruct light or prevent it from passing at all. The blinds are kept drawn, and the family gives curious neighbors invented explanations, but their concealment only feeds speculation. Robinson fears being expelled or prosecuted, while the people responsible for the failed plot are trapped in the practical and social consequences of having him under their roof.

Blindness and Its Recognition

At first, Robinson’s prospects remain uncertain. While his eyelids suppurate, Bardamu tries to reassure him with stories about his eyes and what the future may hold, sometimes pretending the window is shut when it is open or that daylight has given way to darkness. The consolation depends on keeping Robinson from testing what he can see. One day, while Bardamu has turned away, Robinson makes his way to the window and removes the bandage. He touches the frame on either side, then realizes that the window is open but sight has not returned. Calling out to Bardamu, he insists that the window is open; with both arms extended into the air, he tries to reach outward through the darkness. Bardamu pushes him back to bed and offers comfort, but Robinson no longer believes him and begins to cry. The attempt to conceal the truth has reached its limit: Robinson discovers his blindness by testing the ordinary boundary of a window, an object that confirms not freedom of movement but the extent of what he can no longer perceive.

Aftermath and Recognition

After Robinson discovers his blindness, there is no longer a comforting account of what may happen to him. Bardamu has pushed him back from the window and tried to console him, but Robinson no longer believes the reassurances. His discovery leaves him crying and, in Bardamu’s reflection, at the end of what can happen to him: even grief offers no answer, and a person must return among others simply to begin again. The practical burden remains unresolved as well. At lunch, the Henrouilles have no serious plan for getting out of the predicament; the cost of buying Robinson a pension frightens them, and the daughter-in-law has approached Public Welfare without wanting to discuss the steps she has taken.

The episode turns a concealed plan into a household crisis that none of its participants can control. The rabbit hutch and fireworks, intended to make Grandma’s death look like an accident, instead disable Robinson, expose the family’s complicity to their intended victim, and oblige the Henrouilles to shelter the man they hired. Grandma’s survival is more than a reprieve: the attempted murder renews her determination to live and gives her leverage over the daughter-in-law. Robinson’s blindness, meanwhile, is recognized through the simplest test of the outside world—the open window—whose fresh air reaches him while sight does not. Through these reversals, the plot makes an act designed to erase an old woman produce new dependence, scrutiny, and lasting consequences for the would-be accomplice.