Louis Braille, a blind teenager, is awake one night in his school dormitory at the Royal Institute for Blind Youth in Paris. He punches holes in paper with a stylus (a sharp point). A friend nearby whispers that he should be asleep, but Braille perseveres, pausing to feel the raised dots which he has created. Braille reflects that he can no longer remember the sites of his boyhood home, or his parents’ faces.

Chronologically, Chapter 2 occurs before Chapter 1: It is 1812, and Braille is three years old. Braille enters the workshop of his father, Simon-Rene Braille, who works as a saddle and harness maker. Braille has been cautioned that the tools are not toys, but he is curious, and his father is distracted. Braille picks up an awl and tries to pierce a piece of leather. The surface is slippery, and the awl slips and punctures Braille’s left eye. In the following weeks, the eye becomes infected. The infection spreads to Braille’s other eye, destroying the corneas of both eyes. Braille becomes completely blind by the time he is four years old.