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Title: The Story of a Child

Author: Pierre Loti

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THE STORY OF A CHILD

By Pierre Loti




                         THE STORY OF A CHILD

                                  BY

                             PIERRE LOTI

                   Translated by Caroline F. Smith




                               PREFACE



There is to-day a widely spread new interest in child life, a desire
to get nearer to children and understand them. To be sure child study
is not new; every wise parent and every sympathetic teacher has ever
been a student of children; but there is now an effort to do more
consciously and systematically what has always been done in some way.

In the few years since this modern movement began much has been
accomplished, yet there is among many thoughtful people a strong
reaction from the hopes awakened by the enthusiastic heralding of the
newer aspects of psychology. It had been supposed that our science
would soon revolutionize education; indeed, taking the wish for the
fact, we began to talk about the new and the old education (both
mythical) and boast of our millennium. I would not underrate the real
progress, the expansion of educational activities, the enormous gains
made in many ways; but the millennium! The same old errors meet us in
new forms, the old problems are yet unsolved, the waste is so vast
that we sometimes feel thankful that we cannot do as much as we would,
and that Nature protects children from our worst mistakes.

What is the source of this disappointment? Is it not that education,
like all other aspects of life, can never be reduced to mere science?
We need science, it must be increasingly the basis of all life; but
exact science develops very slowly, and meantime we must live.
Doubtless the time will come when our study of mind will have advanced
so far that we can lay down certain great principles as tested laws,
and thus clarify many questions. Even then the solution of the problem
will not be in the enunciation of the theoretic principle, but will
lie in its application to practice; and that application must always
depend upon instinct, tact, appreciation, as well as upon the
scientific law. Even the aid that science can contribute is given
slowly; meanwhile we must work with these children and lift them to
the largest life.

It is in relation to this practical work of education that our effort
to study children gets its human value. There are always two points of
view possible with reference to life. From the standpoint of nature
and science, individuals count for little. Nature can waste a thousand
acorns to raise one oak, hundreds of children may be sacrificed that a
truth may be seen. But from the ethical and human point of view the
meaning of all life is in each individual. That one child should be
lost is a kind of ruin to the universe.

It is this second point of view which every parent and every teacher
must take; and the great practical value of our new study of children
is that it brings us into personal relation with the child world, and
so aids in that subtle touch of life upon life which is the very heart
of education.

It is therefore that certain phases of the study of child life have a
high worth without giving definite scientific results. Peculiarly
significant among these is the study of the autobiographies of
childhood. The door to the great universe is always to the personal
world. Each of us appreciates child life through his own childhood,
and though the children with whom it is his blessed fortune to be
associated. If then it is possible for him to know intimately another
child through autobiography, one more window has been opened into the
child world--one more interpretative unit is given him through which
to read the lesson of the whole.

It is true, autobiographies written later in life cannot give us the
absolute truth of childhood. We see our early experiences through the
mists, golden or gray, of the years that lie between. It is poetry as
well as truth, as Goethe recognized in the title of his own self-
study. Nevertheless the individual who has lived the life can best
bring us into touch with it, and the very poetry is as true as the
fact because interpretative of the spirit.

It is peculiarly necessary that teachers harassed with the routine of
their work, and parents distracted with the multitude of details of
daily existence, should have such windows opened through which they
may look across the green meadows and into the sunlit gardens of
childhood. The result is not theories of child life but appreciation
of children. How one who has read understandingly Sonva Kovalevsky's
story of her girlhood could ever leave unanswered a child starving for
love I cannot see. Mills' account of his early life is worth more than
many theories in showing the deforming effect of an education that is
formal discipline without an awakening of the heart and soul. Goethe's
great study of his childhood and youth must give a new hold upon life
to any one who will appreciatively respond to it.

A better illustration of the subtle worth of such literature, in
developing appreciation of those inner deeps of child life that escape
definition and evaporate from the figures of the statistician, could
scarcely be found than Pierre Loti's "Story of a Child." There is
hardly a fact in the book. It tells not what the child did or what was
done to him, but what he felt, thought, dreamed. A record of
impressions through the dim years of awakening, it reveals a peculiar
and subtle type of personality most necessary to understand. All that
Loti is and has been is gathered up and foreshadowed in the child.
Exquisite sensitiveness to impressions whether of body or soul, the
egotism of a nature much occupied with its own subjective feelings, a
being atune in response to the haunting melody of the sunset, and the
vague mystery of the seas, a subtle melancholy that comes from the
predominance of feeling over masculine power of action, leading one to
drift like Francesca with the winds of emotion, terrible or sweet,
rather than to fix the tide of the universe in the centre of the
forceful deed--all these qualities are in the dreams of the child as
in the life of the man.

And the style?--dreamy, suggestive, melodious, flowing on and on with
its exquisite music, wakening sad reveries, and hinting of gray days
of wind and rain, when the gust around the house wails of broken hopes
and ideals so long-deferred as to be half forgotten,--the minor sob of
his music expresses the spirit of Loti as much as do the moods of the
child he describes.

Such a type, like all others, has its strength and its weakness. Such
a type, like all others, is implicitly in us all. Do we not know it--
the haunting hunger for the permanence of impressions that come and
go, which pulsates through the book till we can scarcely keep back the
tears; the brooding over the two sombre mysteries--Death and Life (and
which is the darker?); the sense of fate driving life on--the fate of
a temperament that restlessly longs for new impressions and intense
emotions, without the vigor of action that cuts the Gordian knot of
fancy and speculation with the swift sword-stroke of an heroic deed.

It is fortunate that the translator has caught the subtle charm of
Loti's style, so difficult to render in another speech, in an amazing
degree. This is peculiarly necessary here, for accuracy of translation
means giving the delicate changes of color and elusive chords of music
that voice the moods and impressions of which the book is made.

Let us read the revelation of this book not primarily to condemn or
praise, or even to estimate and define, but to appreciate. If it be
true that no one ever looked into the Kingdom of Heaven except through
the eyes of a little child, if it be true that the eyes of every
unspoiled child are such a window, take the vision and be thankful.
If, perchance, this window should open toward strange abysses that
reach vaguely away, or upon dark meadows that lie ghost-like in the
mingled light, if out of the abyss rises, undefined, the vast, dim
shape of the mystery, and wakens in us the haunting memories of dead
yesterdays and forgotten years, if we seem carried past the day into
the gray vastness that is beyond the sunset and before the dawn, let
us recognize that the mystery or mysteries, the annunciation of the
Infinite is a little child.

EDWARD HOWARD GRIGGS.



             TO HER MAJESTY ELIZABETH, QUEEN OF ROUMANIA.

  December, 188-

  I am almost too old to undertake this book, for a sort of night is
  falling about me; where shall I find the words vital and young
  enough for the task?

  To-morrow, at sea, I will commence it; at least I will endeavor to
  put into it all that was best of myself at a time when as yet
  there was nothing very bad.

  So that romantic love may find no place in it, except in the
  illusory form of a vision, I will end it at an early age.

  And to the sovereign lady whose suggestion it was that I write it,
  I offer it as a humble token of my respect and admiration.

  PIERRE LOTI.





                        THE STORY OF A CHILD.



                              CHAPTER I.



It is with some degree of awe that I touch upon the enigma of my
impressions at the commencement of my life. I am almost doubtful
whether they had reality within my own experience, or whether they are
not, rather, recollections mysteriously transmitted--I feel an almost
sacred hesitation when I would fathom their depths.

I came forth from the darkness of unconsciousness very gradually, for
my mind was illumined only fitfully, but then by outbursts of splendor
that compelled and fascinated my infant gaze. When the light was
extinguished, I lapsed once more into the non-consciousness of the
new-born animal, of the tiny plant just germinating.

The history of my earliest years is that of a child much indulged and
petted to whom nothing of moment happened; and into whose narrow,
protected life no jarring came that was not foreseen, and the shock of
which was not deadened with solicitous care. In my manners I was
always very tractable and submissive. That I may not make my recital
tedious, I will note without continuity and without the proper
transitions those moments which are impressed upon my mind because of
their strangeness, those moments  that are still so vividly
remembered, although I have forgotten many poignant sorrows, many
lands, adventures, and places.

I was at that time like a fledgling swallow living high up in a niche
in the eaves, who from time to time peeps out over the top of its nest
with its little bright eyes. With the eyes of imagination it sees into
the deeps of space, although to the actual vision only a courtyard and
street are visible; and it sees into depths which it will presently
need to journey through. It was during such moments of clairvoyance
that I had a vision of the infinity of which before my present life I
was a part. Then, in spite of myself, my consciousness flagged, and
for days together I lived the tranquil, subconscious life of early
childhood.

At first my mind, altogether unimpressed and undeveloped, may be
compared to a photographer's apparatus fitted with its sensitized
glass. Objects insufficiently lighted up make no impression upon the
virgin plates; but when a vivid splendor falls upon them, and when
they are encircled by disks of light, these once dim objects now
engrave themselves upon the glass. My first recollections are of
bright summer days and sparkling noon times,--or more truly, are
recollections of the light of wood fires burning with great ruddy
flames.



                             CHAPTER II.



As if it were yesterday I recall the evening when I suddenly
discovered that I could run and jump; and I remember that I was
intoxicated by the delicious sensation almost to the point of falling.

This must have been at about the commencement of my second winter. At
the sad hour of twilight I was in the dining-room of my parents'
house, which room had always seemed a very vast one to me. At first, I
was quiet, made so, no doubt, by the influence of the environing
darkness, for the lamp was not yet lighted. But as the hour for dinner
approached, a maid-servant came in and threw an armful of small wood
into the fireplace to reanimate the dying fire. Immediately there was
a beautiful bright light, and the leaping flames illuminated
everything, and waves of light spread to the far part of the room
where I sat. The flames danced and leaped with a twining motion ever
higher and higher and more gayly, and the tremulous shadows along the
wall ran to their hiding-places--oh! how quickly I arose overwhelmed
with admiration for I recollect that I had been sitting at the feet of
my great-aunt Bertha (at that time already very old) who half dozed in
her chair. We were near a window through which the gray night
filtered; I was seated upon one of those high, old-fashioned foot-
stools with two steps, so convenient for little children who can from
that vantage ground put their heads in grandmother's or grand-aunt's
lap, and wheedle so effectually.

I arose in ecstasy, and approached the flames; then in the circle of
light which lay upon the carpet I began to walk around and around and
to turn. Ever faster and faster I went, until suddenly I felt an
unwonted elasticity run through my limbs, and in a twinkling I
invented a new and amusing style of motion; it was to push my feet
very hard against the floor, and then to lift them up together
suddenly for a half second. When I fell, up I sprang and recommenced
my play. Bang! Bang! With every increasing noise I went against the
floor, and at last I began to feel a singular but agreeable giddiness
in my head. I knew how to jump! I knew how to run!

I am convinced that that is my earliest distinct recollection of great
joyousness.

"Dear me! What is the matter with the child this evening?" asked my
great-aunt Bertha, with some anxiety. And I hear again the unexpected
sound of her voice.

But I still kept on jumping. Like those tiny foolish moths which of an
evening revolve about the light of a lamp, I went around in the
luminous circle which widened and retracted, ever taking form from the
wavering light of the flames. And I remember all of this so vividly
that my eyes can still see the smallest details of the texture of the
carpet which was the scene of the event. It was of durable stuff
called home-spun, woven in the country by native weavers. (Our house
was still furnished as it had been in my maternal grandmother's time,
as she had arranged it after she had quitted the Island, and come to
the mainland.--A little later I will speak of this Island which had
already a mysterious attraction for my youthful imagination.--It was a
simple country house, notable for its Huguenot austerity; and it was a
home where immaculate cleanliness and extreme order were the sole
luxuries.)

In the circle of light, which grew ever more and more narrow, I still
jumped; but as I did so I had thoughts that were of an intensity not
habitual with me. At the same time that my tiny limbs discovered their
power, my spirit also knew itself; a burst of light overspread my mind
where dawning ideas still showed forth feebly. And it is without doubt
to the inner awakening that this fleeting moment of my life owes its
existence, owes undoubtedly its permanency in memory. But vainly I
seek for the words, that seem ever to escape me, through which to
express my elusive emotions. . . . Here in the dining-room I look
about and see the chairs standing the length of the wall, and I am
reminded of the aged grandmother, grand-aunts and aunts who always
come at a certain hour and seat themselves in them. Why are they not
here now? At this moment I would like to feel their protecting
presence about me. Probably they are upstairs in their rooms on the
second floor; between them and me there is the dim stairway, the
stairway that I people with shadowy beings the thought of which makes
me tremble. . . . And my mother? I would wish most especially for her,
but I know that she has gone out, gone out into the long streets which
in my imagination have no end. I had myself gone to the door with her
and had asked her: "When returnest thou?" And she had promised me that
she would return speedily. Later they told me that when I was a child
I would never permit any members of the family to leave the house to
go walking or visiting without first obtaining their assurance of a
speedy homecoming. "You will come back soon?" I would say, and I
always asked the question anxiously, as I followed them to the door.

My mother had departed, and it gave my heart a feeling of heaviness to
know that she was out. Out in the streets! I was content not to be
there where it was cold and dark, where little children so easily lost
their way,--how snug it was to be within doors before the fire that
warmed me through and through; how nice it was to be at home! I had
never realized it until this evening--doubtless it was my first
distinct feeling of attachment to hearth and home, and I was sadly
troubled at the thought of the immense, strange world lying beyond the
door. It was then that I had, for the first time, a conscious
affection for my aged aunts and grand-aunts, who cared for me in
infancy, whom I longed to have seated around me at this dim, sad,
twilight hour.

In the meantime the once bright and playful flames had died down, the
armful of wood was consumed, and as the lamp was not lighted, the room
was quite dark. I had already stumbled upon the home-spun carpet, but
as I had not hurt myself, I recommenced my amusing play. For an
instant I thought to experience a new but strange joy by going into
the shadowy and distant recesses of the room; but I was overtaken
there by an indefinable terror of something which I cannot name, and I
hastily took refuge in the dim circle of light and looked behind me
with a shudder to see whether anything had followed me from out of
those dark corners. Finally the flames died away entirely, and I was
really afraid; aunt Bertha sat motionless upon her chair, and although
I felt that her eyes were upon me I was not reassured. The very
chairs, the chairs ranged about the room, began to disquiet me because
their long shadows, that stretched behind them exaggerating the height
of ceiling and length of wall, moved restlessly like souls in the
agonies of death. And especially there was a half-open door that led
into a very dark hall, which in its turn opened into a large empty
parlor absolutely dark. Oh! with what intensity I fixed my eyes upon
that door to which I would not for the world have turned my back!

This was the beginning of those daily winter-evening terrors which in
that beloved home cast such a gloom over my childhood.

What I feared to see enter that door had no well defined form, but the
fear was none the less definite to me: and it kept me standing
motionless near the dead fire with wide open eyes and fluttering
heart. When my mother suddenly entered the room by a different door,
oh! how I clung to her and covered my face with her dress: it was a
supreme protection, the sanctuary where no harm could reach me, the
harbor of harbors where the storm is forgotten. . . .

At this instant the thread of recollection breaks, I can follow it no
farther.




                             CHAPTER III.



After the ineffaceable impression left by that first fright and that
first dance before the winter fire many months passed during which no
other events were engraven upon my memory, and I relapsed into a
twilight state similar to that at the commencement of my life. But the
mental dimness was pierced now and again with a bright light; as the
gray of early morning is tinged by the rose-color of dawning.

I believe that the impressions which succeeded were those of the
summer time, of the great sun and nature. I recall feeling an almost
delicious terror when one day I found myself alone in the midst of
tall June grasses that grew high as my head. But here the secret
working of self consciousness is almost too entangled with the things
of the past for me to explain it.

We were visiting at a country place called Limoise, a place that at
later time played a great part in my life. It belonged to neighbors
and friends, the D----s, whose house in town was directly next to
ours. Perhaps I had visited Limoise the preceding summer, but at that
time I was very like a cocoon before it has crawled from its silken
wrapping. The day that I now refer to is the one in which I was able
to reflect for the first time, in which I first knew the sweetness of
reverie.

I have forgotten our departure, the carriage ride and our arrival. But
I remember distinctly that late one hot afternoon, as the sun was
setting, I found myself alone in a remote part of a deserted garden.
The gray walls overgrown with ivy and mosses separated its grove of
trees from the moorland and the rocky country round about it. For me,
brought up in the city, the old and solitary garden, where even the
fruit trees were dying from old age, had all the mystery and charm of
a primeval forest. I crossed a border of box, and I was in the midst
of a large uncultivated tract filled with climbing asparagus and great
weeds. Then I cowered down, as is the fashion of little children, that
I might be more effectually hidden by what hid me sufficiently
already, and I remained there motionless with eyes dilated and with
quickening spirit, half afraid, half enraptured. The feeling that I
experienced in the presence of these unfamiliar things was one of
reflection rather than of astonishment. I knew that the bright green
vegetation closing in about me was every where in no less measure than
in the heart of this forest, and emotions, sad and weird and vague
took possession of me and affrighted but fascinated me. That I might
remain hidden as long as possible I crouched lower and still lower,
and I felt the joy a little Indian boy feels when he is in his beloved
forest.

Suddenly I heard someone call: "Pierre! Pierre! Dear Pierre!" I did
not reply, but instead lay as close as possible to the ground, and
sought to hide under the weeds and the waving branches of the
asparagus.

Still I heard: "Pierre, Pierre." It was Lucette; I knew her voice, and
from the mockery of her tone I felt sure that she had spied me. But I
could not see her although I looked about me very carefully: no one
was visible!

With peals of laughter she continued to call, and her voice grew
merrier and merrier. Where can she be? thought I.

Ah! At last I spied her perched upon the twisted branch of a tree that
was overhung with gray moss!

I was fairly caught and I came out of my green hiding place.

As I rose I gazed over the wild and flowering things, and saw the
corner of the old moss-grown wall that enclosed the garden. That wall
was destined to be at a later time a very familiar haunt of mine, for
on the Thursday holidays during my college life I spent many a happy
hour sitting upon it contemplating the peaceful and quiet country, and
there I mused, to the chirping accompaniment of the crickets, of those
distant countries fairer and sunnier than my own. And upon that summer
day those gray and crumbling stones, defaced by the sun and weather,
and overgrown with mosses, gave me for the first time an indefinable
impression of the persistence of things; a vague conception of
existences antedating my own, in times long past.

Lucette D----, my elder by eight or ten years, seemed to me already a
grown person. I cannot recall the time when I did not know her. Later
I came to love her as a sister, and her early death in her prime was
one of the first real griefs of my boyhood.

And the first recollection I have of her is as I saw her in the
branches of the old pear tree. Her image doubtless begets a vividness
from the two new emotions with which it is blended: the enchanting
uneasiness I felt at the invasion of green nature and the melancholy
reverie that took possession of me as I contemplated the old wall,
type of ancient things and olden times.




                             CHAPTER IV.



I will now endeavor to explain the impression that the sea made upon
me at our first brief and melancholy encounter, which took place at
twilight upon the evening of my arrival at the Island.

Notwithstanding the fact that I could scarcely see it, it had so
remarkable an effect on me that in a single moment it was engraven
upon my memory forever. I feel a retrospective shudder run through me
when my spirit broods upon the recollection.

We had but newly arrived at this village near St. Ongeoise where my
parents had rented a fisherman's house for the bathing season. I knew
that we had come here for something called the sea, but I had had no
glimpse of it (a line of dunes hid it from me because of my short
stature), and I was extremely impatient to become acquainted with it;
therefore after dinner, as night was falling, I went alone to seek
this mysterious thing.

The air was sharp and biting, and unlike any I had experienced, and
from behind the hillocks of sand, along which the path led, there came
a faint but majestic noise. Everything affrighted me, the unfamiliar
way, the twilight falling from the overcast sky, and the loneliness of
this part of the village. But inspired by one of those great and
sudden resolutions, that come sometimes to the most timid, I went
forward with a firm step.

Suddenly I stopped overcome and almost paralyzed by fear, for
something took shape before me, something dark and surging sprang up
from all sides at the same time and it seemed to stretch out
endlessly. It was something so vast and full of motion that I was
seized with a deadly vertigo--it was the sea of my imagining! Without
a moment's hesitation, without asking how this knowledge had been
wrought, without astonishment even, I recognized it and I trembled
with a great emotion. It was so dark a green as to be almost black; to
me it seemed unstable, perfidious, all ingulfing, always turbulent,
and of a sinister, menacing aspect. Above it, in harmony with it,
stretched the gray and lowering sky.

And far away, very far away, upon the immeasurable distant horizon I
perceived a break between the sky and the waters, and a pale yellow
light showed through this cleft.

Had I been to the sea before to recognize it thus quickly? Perhaps I
had, but without being conscious of it, for when I was about five or
six months old I had been brought to the Island by my great aunt, my
grandmother's sister; or perhaps because it had played so great a part
in my sea-faring ancestors' lives I was born with a nascent conception
of it and its immensity.

We communed together a moment, one with the other--I was deeply
fascinated. At our first encounter I am sure I had a nebulous
presentiment that I would one day go to it in spite of my hesitation,
in spite of all the efforts put forth to hold me back,--and the
emotion that overwhelmed me in the presence of the sea was not only
one of fear, but I felt also an inexpressible sadness, and I seemed to
feel the anguish of desolation, bereavement and exile. With downcast
mien, and with hair blown about by the wind, I turned and ran home. I
was in the extreme haste to be with my mother; I wished to embrace her
and to cling close to her; I desired to be with her so that she might
console me for the thousand indefinite, anticipated sorrows that
surged through my heart at the sight of those green waters, so vast
and so deep.




                              CHAPTER V.



My mother!--I have already mentioned her two or three times in the
course of this recital, but without stopping to speak of her at
length. It seems that at first she was no more to me than a natural
and instinctive refuge where I ran for shelter from all terrifying and
unfamiliar things, from all the dark forebodings that had no real
cause.

But I believe she took on reality and life for the first time in the
burst of ineffable tenderness which I felt when one May morning she
entered my room with a bouquet of pink hyacinths in her hand; she
brought in with her as she came a ray of sunlight.

I was convalescing from one of the maladies peculiar to children,--
measles or whooping cough, I know not which,--and I had been ordered
to remain in bed and to keep warm. By the rays of light that filtered
in through the closed shutters I divined the springtime warmth and
brightness of the sun and air, and I felt sad that I had to remain
behind the curtains of my tiny white bed; I wished to rise and go out;
but most of all I had a desire to see my mother.

The door opened and she entered, smiling. Ah, I remember it so well! I
recall so distinctly how she looked as she stood upon the threshold of
the door. And I remember that she brought in with her some of the
sunlight and balminess of the spring day.

I see again the expression of her face as she looked at me; and I hear
the sound of her voice, and recall the details of her beloved dress
that would look funny and old-fashioned to me now. She had returned
from her morning shopping, and she wore a straw hat trimmed with
yellow roses and a shawl of lilac barege (it was the period of the
shawl) sprinkled with tiny bouquets of violets. Her dark curls (the
poor beloved curls to-day, alas! so thin and white) were at this time
without a gray hair. There was about her the fragrance of the May day,
and her face as it looked that morning with its broad brimmed hat is
still distinctly present with me. Besides the bouquet of pink
hyacinths, she had brought me a tiny watering-pot, an exact imitation
in miniature of the crockery ones so much used by the country people.

As she leaned over my bed to embrace me I felt as if every wish was
gratified. I no longer had a desire to weep, nor to rise from my bed,
nor to go out. She was with me and that sufficed--I was consoled,
tranquillized, and re-created by her gracious presence.

I was, I think, a little more than three years old at this time, and
my mother must have been about forty-two years of age; but I had not
the least notion of age in regard to her, and it had never occurred to
me to wonder whether she was young or old; nor did I realize until a
later time that she was beautiful. No, at this period that she was her
own dear self was enough; to me she was in face and form a person so
apart and so unique that I would not have dreamed of comparing her
with any one else. From her whole being there emanated such a
joyousness, security and tenderness, and so much goodness that from
thence was born my understanding of faith and prayer.

I would that I could speak hallowed words to the first blessed form
that I find in the book of memory. I would it were possible that I
could greet my mother with words filled with the meaning I wish to
convey. They are words which cause bountiful tears to flow, but tears
fraught with I know not how much of the sweetness of consolation and
joy, words that are ever, and in spite of everything, filled with the
hope of an immortal reunion.

And since I have touched upon this mystery that has had such an
influence upon my soul, I will here set down that my mother alone is
the only person in the world of whom I have the feeling that death
cannot separate me. With other human beings, those whom I have loved
with all my heart and soul, I have tried to imagine a hereafter, a
to-morrow in which there shall be no to-morrow; but no, I cannot!
Rather I have always had a horrible consciousness of our nothingness--
dust to dust, ashes to ashes. Because of my mother alone have I been
able to keep intact the faith of my early days. It still seems to me
that when I have finished playing my poor part in life, when I no
longer run in the overgrown paths that lead to the unattainable, when
I am through amusing humanity with my conceits and my sorrows, I will
go there where my mother, who has gone before me, is, and she will
receive me; and the smile of serenity that she now wears in my memory
will have become one of triumphant realization.

True, I see that distant region only dimly, and it has no more
substance than a pale gray vision; my words, however intangible and
elusive, give too definite a form to my dreamy conceptions. But still
(I speak as a little child, with the child's faith), but still I
always think of my mother as having, in that far off place, preserved
her earthly aspect. I think of her with her dear white curls and the
straight lines of her beautiful profile that the years may have
impaired a little, but which I still find perfect. The thought that
the face of my mother shall one day disappear from my eyes forever,
that it is no more than combined elements subject to disintegration,
and that she will be lost in the universal abyss of nothingness, not
only makes my heart bleed, but it causes me to revolt as at something
unthinkable and monstrous; it cannot be! I have the feeling that there
is about her something which death cannot touch.

My love for my mother (the only changeless love of my life) is so free
from all material feeling that that alone gives me an inexplicable
hope, almost gives me a confidence in the immortality of the soul.

I cannot very well understand why the vision of my mother near my bed
of sickness should that morning have impressed me so vividly, for she
was nearly always with me. It all seems very mysterious; it is as if
at that particular moment she was for the first time revealed to me.

And why among the treasured playthings of my childhood has the tiny
watering-pot taken on the value and sacred dignity of a relic? So much
so indeed, that when I am far distant on the ocean, in hours of
danger, I think of it with tenderness, and see it in the place where
it has lain for years, in the little bureau, never opened, mixed in
with broken toys; and should it disappear I would feel as if I had
lost an amulet that could not be replaced.

And the simple shawl of lilac barege, found recently among some old
clothing laid aside to be given to the poor, why have I put it away as
carefully as if it were a priceless object? Because in its color (now
faded), in its quaint Indian pattern and tiny bouquets of violets, I
still find an emanation from my mother; I believe that I borrow
therefrom a holy calm and sweet confidence that is almost a faith. And
mingled in with the other feelings there is perhaps a melancholy
regret for those May mornings of long ago that seemed so much brighter
than are those of to-day.

Truly I fear this book, the most personal I have ever written, will
weary many.

In transcribing these memories in the calm of middle life, so
favorable to reverie, I had constantly present in my thought the
lovely queen to whom I would dedicate this book; it is as if I were
writing her a long letter with the full assurance of being understood
in all those sacred matters to which words give but an inadequate
expression.

Perhaps you will understand also, my dear unknown readers, who with
kindly sympathy have followed me thus far; and all those who cherish,
or who have been cherished by their mothers will not smile at the
childish things written down here.

But this chapter will certainly seem ridiculous to those who are
strangers to an all absorbing love, they will not be able to imagine
that I have a deep pity to exchange for their cynical smiles.




                             CHAPTER VI.



Before I finish writing of the confused memories I have of the
commencement of my life I wish to speak of another ray of sunshine--a
sad ray this time,--that has left an ineffaceable impression upon me,
and the meaning of which will never be clear to me.

Upon a Sunday, after we had returned from church, the ray appeared to
me. It came through a half-open window and fell into the stairway, and
as it lengthened itself upon the whiteness of the wall it took on a
peculiar, weird shape.

I had returned from church with my mother and as I mounted the stairs
I took her hand. The house was filled with a humming silence peculiar
to the noontime of very hot summer days (it was August or September).
Following the habit of our country the shutters were half closed
making indoors, during the heated period of the day, a sort of
twilight.

As I entered the house there came to me an appreciation of the
stillness of Sunday that in the country and in peaceful byways of
little towns is like the peace of death. But when I saw the ray of
sunlight fall obliquely through the staircase window, I had a feeling
more poignant than ordinary sorrow; I had a feeling altogether
incomprehensible and absolutely new in which there seemed infused a
conception of the brevity of life's summers, their rapid flight and
the incomputable ages of the sun. But other elements still more
mysterious, that it would be impossible for me to explain even
vaguely, entered therein.

I wish to add to the history of this ray of sunshine the sequel that
is intimately connected with it. Years passed; I became a man, and
after having been among many people and experienced many adventures I
lived for an autumn and winter in an isolated house in an unfrequented
part of Stamboul. It was there that every evening at approximately the
same hour, a ray of sunlight came in through the window and fell
obliquely on the wall and lit up the niche (hollowed out of the stone
wall) in which I had placed an Athenian vase. And I never saw that ray
of sunlight without thinking of the one I had seen upon that Sunday of
long ago; nor without having the same, precisely the same sad emotion,
scarcely diminished by time, and always full of the same mystery. And
when I had to leave Turkey, when I was obliged to quit my dangerous
but adored lodgings in Stamboul, with all my busy and hurried
preparations for departure there was mingled this strange regret:
never more should I see the oblique ray of sunshine come into the
stairway window and fall upon the niche in the wall where the Greek
vase stood.

Perhaps under all of this there may have been, if not recollections of
a previous personal experience, at least the reflected inchoate
thoughts of ancestors which I am unable in any clearer way to bring
out of darkness. But enough! I must say no more, for I again find
myself in the land of vague fancy, gliding phantoms and illusive
nothings.

For this almost unintelligible chapter there is no excuse that I can
offer, save that I have written it with the greatest frankness and
sincerity.




                             CHAPTER VII.



And I now recall the impressions of springtime, all the fresh splendor
of May; and I remember vividly the lonely road called the Fountain
road.

(As I am endeavoring to put my recollections into some sort of order I
think that at this time I must have been about five years old.)

I was old enough at any rate to take walks with my father and my
sister, and I went out with them this dewy morning. I was in ecstasy
to see that everything had become so green, to see the budding foliage
and the tasselled shrubs and hedges. Along the sides of the road the
grass was all the same length, and the flowers in the grass with their
exquisite mingling of the red of the geranium and the blue of the
speedwell, made the whole earth seem a great bouquet. As I plucked the
flowers I scarcely knew which way to run; in my eagerness I trod upon
them and my legs became wet from the dew--I marvelled at all the
richness at my disposal, and I longed to take great armfuls of the
flowers and carry them away with me.

My sister, who had gathered a sprig of hawthorn, one of iris and some
long sheath-like grasses leaned towards me, and took my hand, and
said: "You have enough for the present; you see, dear, that we could
never gather all of them."

But I did not heed, so absolutely intoxicated was I with the
magnificence about me, the like of which I did not recall ever to have
seen before.

That was the beginning of those almost daily excursions that I took
with my father and sister, and that I kept up for so long a time
(almost to my boarding-school days). It is through them that I became
so well acquainted with the surrounding country and with the varieties
of flowers found there. Poor fields and meadows of my native country!
So monotonous, so flat, one so like another; fields of hay and daisies
where in childhood I would disappear from sight and hide under the
green vegetation. Fields of corn and paths bordered with hawthorn, I
love you all in spite of your monotony!

Toward the west, in the far distance, my eyes sought for a glimpse of
the sea. Sometimes when we had gone a long way there would appear upon
the horizon, among the other lines there, a straight bluish one; it
was the sea; and it lured me to it finally as a great and patient
lover lures, who sure of his power is willing to wait.

My sister and my brother, of whom I have not spoken before, were
considerably older than I; it seemed almost as if we belonged to
different generations. For that reason they petted me even more than
did my father and mother, my grandmother and aunts; and as I was the
only child among them I was cherished like a little hot-house plant, I
was too tenderly guarded and remained all too unacquainted with thorns
and brambles.




                            CHAPTER VIII.



Someone has advanced the theory that those persons endowed with a gift
for painting (either with color or with words) probably belong to a
half-blind species; accustomed to living in a partial light, in a sort
of misty grayness, they turn their gaze inward; and when by chance
they do look out their impressions are ten times more vivid than are
those of ordinary people.

To me that seems a little paradoxical.

But it is true that sometimes an enveloping darkness aids one to
clearer vision; as in a panorama building, for example, where the
obscurity about the entrance prepares one better for the climax, and
gives the scene depicted a more real and vivid appearance.

In the course of my life I would without doubt have been less
impressed by the ever shifting phantasmagoria of existence had I not
begun my journey in a place almost without distinctive color, in a
tranquil corner of the most commonplace little town, receiving an
education austerely pious; and where my longest journey was bounded by
the forests of Limoise (as wonderful to me as a primeval forest) and
by the shores of the island of Oleron, that seemed very immense when I
went to it to visit my aged aunts.

But after all is said, it was in the yard about our house that I
passed the happiest of my summers--it seemed to me that that was my
particular kingdom, and I adored it.

It was in truth a beautiful yard, much more sunny and airy than the
majority of city gardens. Its long avenue of green and flowery
branches, that overtopped the heads of the neighboring fruit trees,
was bordered on the south by a low and ancient wall over which grew
roses and honeysuckles. The long leafy avenue gave the impression of
great depth, and its perspective melted into a bower of vines and
jasmine bushes that in turn became a great verdant place, which came
to an end at a storehouse of ancient construction, whose gray stones
were hidden under ivy vines.

Ah! How I loved that garden, and how much I still love it!

I believe the keenest, earliest memories are of the beautiful long
summer evenings. Oh! the return from a walk during those long, clear
twilights that certainly were more delicious than are those of to-day.
What joy to re-enter that yard which the thorn-apples and the
honeysuckles filled with the sweetest odor, to enter and see from the
gate all the long avenue of tangled greenness. Through an opening in a
bower of Virginia Creeper I could see the rosy splendor of the setting
sun; and somewhat removed in the gathering shadows of the foliage,
there were distinguishable three or four persons. The persons, it is
true, were very quiet and they were dressed in black, but they were
nevertheless very reassuring to me, very familiar and very much
beloved: they were the forms of mother, grandmother and aunts. Then I
would run to them hastily and throw myself upon their laps, and that
was always one of the happiest moments of my day.




                             CHAPTER IX.



In the month of March, as the shadows of twilight gathered, two little
children were seated very close together upon a low footstool--two
little ones, between the ages of five and six, dressed in short
trousers with white pinafores over them, as was the fashion of the
time. After having played wildly they were now quietly amusing
themselves with paper and pencils. The dim light seemed to fill them
with a vague fear, and it troubled their spirits.

Of the two children only one was drawing--it was I. The other, a
friend invited over for the day, an exceptional thing, was watching me
with great attention. With some difficulty (trusting me meantime) he
followed the fantastic movements of my pencil whose intention I took
care to explain to him at some length. And my oral interpretation was
necessary, for I was busy executing two drawings that I entitled
respectively, "The Happy Duck" and "The Unhappy Duck."

The room in which we were seated must have been furnished about the
year 1805, at the time of the marriage of my now-very-old grandmother,
who still occupied it, and who this evening was seated in the chair of
the Directory period; she was singing to herself and she took no
notice of us.

My memories of my grandmother are indistinct for her death occurred
shortly after this time; but as I will never again, in the course of
this recital, have a more vivid impression of her, I will here insert
what I know of her history.

It seems that in the stress of all sorts of troubles she had been a
brave and noble mother. After reverses that were so general in those
days, after losing her husband at the Battle of Trafalgar, and her
elder son at the shipwreck of the Medusa, she went resolutely to work
to educate her younger son, my father, until such time as he should be
able to support himself. At about her eightieth year (which was not
far distant when I came into the world) the senility of second
childhood had set in; at that time I knew nothing about the tragedy of
the loss of memory and I could not realize the vacancy of her mind and
soul.

She would often stand for a long time before a mirror and talk in a
most amiable way to her own reflection, which she called, "my good
neighbor" or "my dear neighbor." It was also her mania to sing with a
most excessive ardor the Marseillaise, the Parisiennes, the "Song of
Farewell," and all the noble songs of the transition time, which had
been the rage in her young womanhood.

During these exciting times she had lived quietly, and had occupied
herself entirely with her household cares and her son's education. For
that reason it seems the more singular that from her disordered mind,
just about as it was to take its journey into complete darkness and to
become disintegrated through death, there should come this tardy echo
of that tempestuous time.

I enjoyed listening to her very much and often I would laugh, but
without any irreverence, and I never was the least afraid of her. She
was extremely lovely and had delicate and regular features, and her
expression was very sweet. Her abundant hair was silver-gray, and upon
her cheeks there was a color similar to that of a faded rose leaf, a
color which the old people of that generation often retained into
extreme old age. I remember that she usually wore a red cashmere shawl
about her shoulders, and that she always had on an old-fashioned cap
trimmed with green ribbons. There was something very modest and gentle
and pleasing about her still graceful little body.

Her room, where I liked to come to play because it was so large and
sunny, was furnished as simply as a Presbyterian parsonage: the waxed
walnut furniture was of the Directory period, the large bed had a
canopy of thick, red, cotton stuff and the walls were painted an ochre
yellow; and upon them in gilt frames, slightly tarnished, were hung
water colors representing vases of flowers. I very soon discovered
that this room was furnished in a very simple and old-fashioned way,
and I thought to myself that the good old grandmother who sang so
constantly must be much poorer than my other grandmother, who was
younger by twenty years, and who always dressed in black--which last
matter seemed an elegant distinction to me.

But to return to my drawings! I think that the pictures of those two
ducks, occupying such different stations in life, were the first I
ever drew.

At the bottom of the picture called "The Happy Duck" I had drawn a
tiny house, and near the duck himself there was a large, kind woman
who was calling him to her so that she might give him food.

"The Unhappy Duck," on the other hand, was swimming about solitary and
alone on a sort of hazy sea, which I had represented by drawing two or
three straight lines, and in the distance one could see the outline of
a gloomy shore. The thin paper, a leaf torn from a book, had print on
the reverse side, and the letters showed through in grayish flecks and
gave the curious impression as of clouds in the sky. And that little
drawing, with less form than a school-boy's blackboard scrawl, was
completely transfigured by those gray spots, and because of them it
took on for me a deep and dreadful significance. Aided by the dim
light in the room the pictured scene became a vision that faded away
into the distance like the pale surface of the sea. I was terrified at
my own work; I was astonished to find in it those things that I had
not put there; to discover in it those things which elsewhere had
given me such a well remembered anguish.

"Oh!" I said with exaltation to my young companion, who did not
understand anything of what was going forward, "Oh!" I exclaimed with
a voice full of emotion, "you may see it; I cannot bear to look at
it!" I covered the picture with my hands, but nevertheless I peeped at
it very often; and it was so vividly impressed upon my mind that I can
still recall it as it appeared to me transfigured: a gleam of light
lay upon the horizon of that sea so awkwardly represented, the heavens
appeared to be filled with rain, and it seemed to be a dreary winter
evening in which there was a fierce wind blowing.

The "Unhappy Duck" solitary, far away from his family and friends was
making his way toward the foggy shore over which there hung an air of
extreme sadness and desolation. And certainly for one fleeting moment
I had a prescience of those heartaches that I was to know later in the
course of my sailor life. I seemed to have a presentiment of those
stormy December evenings when my boat was to enter, to take shelter
until the morning, one of those uninhabited bays upon the coast of
Brittany; more particularly I had a prescience of those twilights of
the Antarctic winter when, in about the latitude of Magellan, we were
to go in search of protection towards those sterile shores that are as
inhospitable and as absolutely deserted as the waters surrounding
them.

The vision faded and I once more found myself in my grandmother's
large room enveloped in the shadows of the evening. My grandmother was
singing, and I was again a tiny being who had seen nothing of the
large world, who had fears without knowing wherefore, and who did not
even know the cause of the tears that he shed.

Since then I have often observed that the rudimentary scrawls made by
children, and which as representations are incorrect and inadequate,
impress them much more than do the able and correct drawing of adults.
For although theirs are incomplete they add to them a thousand things
of their own seeing and imagining; and they add to them also the
thousand things that grow in the deep subsoil of their consciousness--
the things which no brush would be able to paint.




                              CHAPTER X.



Upon the second floor, above the room occupied by my poor old
grandmother, who sang the Marseillaise so constantly, in that part of
the house overlooking the yard and the gardens, lived my great-aunt
Bertha.

From her windows, across the houses and the walls covered with roses
and jasmine, one could see the ramparts of the town. They were so near
to us that their old trees were visible; and beyond them lay those
great plains of our country called prees (prairies) all so alike, and
as monotonous as the neighboring seas. From the window one also saw
the river. At full tide, when it almost overflowed its banks, it
looked, as it wound along through the green meadows, like silver lace;
and the large and small boats that passed in the far distance mounted
upon this silver thread toward the harbor and from there sailed out
into the great sea.

As this was our only glimpse of real country the windows in my aunt
Bertha's room had always a great attraction for me. Especially had
they in the evening at sunset, for from them I could watch the sun
sink mysteriously behind the prairies. Oh! those sunsets that I saw
from my aunt Bertha's windows, what ecstasy overcast with melancholy
they awakened in me! The winter sunsets seen through the closed
windows were a pale rose color. Those of summer time, upon stormy
evenings, after a hot, bright day, I contemplated from the open
window, and as I did so I would breathe in the sweet odors given out
by the jasmine blossoms growing on the wall: it seems to me that there
are no such sunsets now as there were then. When the sunsets were
notably splendid and unusual, if I was not in the room, aunt Bertha,
who never missed one, would call out hastily: "Dearie! Dearie! Come
quickly!" From any corner of the house I heard that call and
understood it, and I went swift as a hurricane and mounted the stairs
four steps at a time. I mounted the more rapidly because the stairway
had already begun to fill with dread shadows; and in the turnings and
corners I saw the imaginary forms of ghosts and monsters that at
nightfall always pursued me as I ran up the stairs.

My aunt Bertha's room, with its simple white muslin curtains, was as
modest as my grandmother's. The walls, covered with an old-fashioned
paper in vogue at the commencement of the century, were ornamented
with water colors similar to those in my grandmother's room. The
picture that I looked at most often was a pastel after Raphael of a
virgin in white, blue and rose color. The rays of the setting sun
always fell upon this picture (I have already said the hour of sunset
was the time I preferred most to be in this room). This virgin was
very much like my aunt Bertha; in spite of the great difference in
their ages, one was struck with the resemblance between the straight
lines and regularity of their profiles.

On this same floor, but upon the street side, lived my other
grandmother (the one who always dressed in black) and her daughter, my
aunt Claire, the person in the house who petted me most.

Upon winter evenings, after I had been to my aunt Bertha's room to see
the sunset, it was my custom to go to them. I usually found them
together in my grandmother's room and I would seat myself near the
fire in a little chair placed there for me. But the twilight hour
spent with them was always a disturbing one. . . . After all the
amusements, all the day's running and playing, to sit in the dusk
almost motionless upon my tiny chair, with eyes wide open, uneasily
watching for the least change in the shadows, especially on that side
of the room where the door opened on the dim stairway, was very
painful to me. . . . I am sure that if my grandmother and aunt had
known of the melancholy and terrors which the twilight induced in me,
they would have spared me by lighting the lamp, but they did not know
my sufferings; and it was the custom of the aged persons by whom I was
surrounded, to sit tranquilly at nightfall in their accustomed places
without having need for a lighted lamp. As it grew darker one or the
other, grandmother or aunt, would draw her chair closer to me, and
when I had that protection about me I felt completely happy and
reassured and would say: "Please tell me stories about the Island."

The Island, that is the Island of Oleron, was my mother's native
place, my grandmother's and aunt's also, which they had quitted twenty
years before my birth to establish themselves upon the main land. The
Island, or the least thing that came from it, had a singular charm for
me.

It was quite near us, for from a garret window at the top of the house
we could, upon a very clear day, see the extreme end of its extensive
plain; it appeared a little bluish line against a still paler one
which was the arm of the ocean separating us from it. . . . To get to
it we had to take a long journey in wretched country wagons and in
sailing boats; and often our boat had to make its way there in the
teeth of a strong gale. At this time in the village of St. Pierre
Oleron I had three old aunts who lived very modestly upon the revenues
of their salt marshes (the remains of a once great inheritance), and
their annual rents which the peasants still paid with sacks of wheat.
. . . When I went to visit them at St. Pierre there was for me a
certain joy, mingled with many kinds of conflicting emotions, which I
cannot explain, in trying to picture to myself their once great
station.

The Huguenot austerity of their manners, their mode of life, their
house and their furniture all belonged to a past time, to a bygone
generation. The sea surrounded and isolated us, and the wind
constantly swept over the moorland and over the great stretches of
sandy beach.

My nurse was also from the Island, of a Huguenot family, which
descending from father to son had been with us for a long time; and
she would say: "At home, on the Island," in such a way that with a
wave of emotion I understood her great homesickness for it.

We had about us a number of little articles that had come from there,
and which had places of honor in our home. We had some black pebbles
large as cannon-balls, that had been chosen from the thousands lying
on the Long-Beach because centuries of washing had polished and
rounded them exquisitely. These pebbles always played an important
part every winter evening, for with the greatest regularity the old
people would put them into the chimney-place where a wood fire blazed
and crackled; afterwards they slipped them into calico bags of a
flowered pattern, also brought from the Island, and took them to bed
where they served to keep their feet warm during the night.

In our cellar we had wooden props and firkins, and also a number of
straight elm poles for holding the washing which had been cut from the
choicest young trees in my grandmother's forest. I had the greatest
veneration for all these things. I knew that my grandmother no longer
owned the forests, nor the salt marshes, nor the vineyards; for I had
heard them say that she had sold them one at a time to put the money
into investments upon the mainland; and that an incompetent notary by
his bad investments had greatly reduced her income.

When I went to the Island and the old salt makers and vine dressers,
who had at one time worked for our family, still loyal and respectful
called me "our little master," I knew they did so out of pure
politeness and altogether in deference to our past grandeur.

I regretted that I could not spend my life in tending the vineyards
and the harvests, the occupations of several of my ancestors. Such a
life seemed a much more desirable one to me than my own which was
passed in a house in town.

The stories of the Island that my grandmother and aunt Claire related
to me were generally of the happenings of their own childhood, a
childhood that seemed so very far away that to me it had no more
reality than a dream.

There were stories of grandfathers, long dead; of great-uncles whom I
had never known, dead also for many years. When my aunt told me their
names and described them to me I would abandon myself to reverie.
There was in particular a grandfather Samuel who had preached at the
time of the religious persecution, whom I thought an extraordinarily
interesting person.

I did not care whether the stories were different or not, and I would
ask for the same ones over and over. Often they told me stories of
journeys they had taken on the little donkeys that played such an
important part in the lives of the people of St. Pierre. They would
ride upon them to visit distant properties and vineyards; to get to
these it was often necessary to travel along the sands of the Long-
Beach, and sometimes of an evening during these expeditions terrible
storms would burst upon the travellers and compel them to take shelter
for the night in the inns and farmhouses.

And as I sat in the darkness that no longer had terrors for me, my
imagination busy with the things and peoples of other days, tinkle,
tinkle would go the dinner bell; then I rose and jumped for joy, and
we would go down to the dining-room together and find all the family
gathered there in the bright gay room: then I would run to my mother
and in an excess of emotion hide my face in her dress.




                             CHAPTER XI.



Gaspard was a little crop-eared dog who was saved from absolute
homeliness by the vivacious and kindly expression of his eyes. I do
not now recall how he came to domesticate himself with us, but I do
know that I loved him very tenderly.

One winter afternoon, when he and I were out for a walk, he ran away
from me. I consoled myself, however, by saying that he would certainly
return to the house alone, and I went home in a happy frame of mind.
But when night came and he was still absent I grew very heavy of
heart.

My parents had at dinner that evening an accomplished violinist and
they had given me permission to remain up later than usual so that I
might hear him. The first sweep of his bow which preluded I know not
what slow and desolate movement, sounded to me like an invocation to
those dark woodland paths in which, in the deeps of night, one feels
that he is lost and abandoned; as the musician played I had a vision
of Gaspard mistaking his way at the cross-roads because of the rain,
and I saw him take an unfamiliar path that led forever away from
friends and home. Then my tears began to flow, but no one perceived
them; and as I wept the violin continued to fill the silence with its
sad wailing, and it seemed to get a response from bottomless abysses
inhabited by phantoms to which I could give neither a form nor name.

That was my introduction to reverie awaking music, and years passed
before I again experienced such sensations, for the little piano
pieces that I began to play for myself soon after this (in a
remarkable way for a child of my age they said) sounded to me only
like sweet, rhythmical noise.




                             CHAPTER XII.



I wish now to speak of the anguish caused by a story that was read to
me. (I seldom read for myself, and in fact I disliked books very
much.)

A very disobedient little boy who had run away from his family and his
native land, years later, after the death of his parents and his
sister, returned alone to visit his parental home. This took place in
November, and naturally the author described the dull gray sky and
spoke of the bleak wind that blew the few remaining leaves from the
trees.

In a deserted garden, in an arbor stripped of all its green, the
prodigal son in stooping down found among the autumn leaves a bluish
bead that had lain there since the time he had played in the bower
with his sister.

Oh! at that point I begged them to cease reading, for I felt the sobs
coming. I could see, see vividly, that solitary garden, that leafless
old arbor, and half-hidden under the reddish leaves I saw that blue
bead, souvenir of the dead sister. . . . It depressed me dreadfully
and gave me a conception of that inevitable fading away of everything
and every one, of the great universal change that comes to all.

It is strange that my tenderly guarded infancy should have been so
full of sad emotions and morbid reflections.

I am sure that the sad days and happenings were rare, and that I lived
the joyous and careless life of other children; but just because the
happy days were so habitual to me they made no impression upon my
mind, and I can no longer recall them.

My memories of the summer time are so similar that they break with the
splendor of the sun into the dark places and things of my mind.

And always the great heat, the deep blue skies, the sparkling sand of
the beach and the flood of light upon the white lime walls of the
cottages of the little villages upon the "Island" induced in me a
melancholy and sleepiness which I afterwards experienced with even
greater intensity in the land of the Turk.




                            CHAPTER XIII.



"And at midnight there was a cry made: Behold, the Bridegroom cometh;
go ye out to meet him. . . . And they that were ready went in with him
to the marriage; and the door was shut. Afterward came also the other
virgins, saying, Lord, Lord, open to us.

"But he answered and said, Verily, I say unto you, I know you not.

"Watch therefore, for ye know neither the day nor the hour wherein the
Son of man cometh."

After reading these verses in a loud voice, my father closed the
Bible; in the room where we were assembled there was a sound of chairs
being moved and we all went down upon our knees to pray. Following the
usage in old Huguenot families, it was our custom to have prayers just
before retiring to our rooms for the night.

"And the door was shut. . . ." Although I still knelt I no longer
heard the prayer, for the foolish virgins appeared to me. They were
enveloped in white veils that billowed about them as they stood before
the door holding in their hands the little lamps whose flickering
flames were so soon to be extinguished, leaving them in the gloom
without before that closed door, closed against them irrevocably and
forever. . . . And a time could come then when it would be too late;
when the Saviour weary of our trespassing would no longer listen to
our supplications! I had never thought that that was possible. And a
fear more terrifying and awful than any I had ever known before
completely overwhelmed me at the thought of eternal damnation. . . .

                  *       *       *       *       *

For a long time, for many weeks and months, the parable of the foolish
virgins haunted me. And every evening, when darkness came, I would
repeat to myself the words that sounded so beautiful and yet so
dismaying: "Watch therefore, for ye know neither the day nor the hour
wherein the Son of man cometh." If he should come to-night, was ever
my thought, I would be awakened by a noise as of the sound of rushing
waters, by the blare of the trumpet of the angel of the Lord
announcing the terrifying approach of the end of the world. And I
could never go to sleep until I had said a long prayer in which I
commended myself to the mercy of my Saviour.

I do not believe there was ever a little child who had a more
sensitive conscience than I; about everything I was so morbidly
scrupulous that I was often misunderstood by those who loved me best,
a thing that caused me the most poignant heartaches. I remember having
been tormented for days merely because in relating something I had not
reported it precisely as it had happened. And to such a point did I
carry my squeamishness of conscience that when I had finished with my
recital or statement I would murmur in a low voice, in the tone of one
who tells over his beads, these words: "After all, perhaps I do not
remember just exactly how it was." When I think of the thousand
remorses and fears which my trifling wrong doings caused me, and which
from my sixth to my eighth year cast a gloom over my childhood, I feel
a sort of retrospective depression.

At that period if any one asked me what I hoped to be in the future,
when a man, without hesitation I would answer: "I expect to be a
minister,"--and to me the religious vocation seemed the very grandest
one. And those about me would smile and without doubt they thought,
inasmuch as I too wished it, that it was the best career for me.

In the evening, especially at night, I meditated constantly of that
hereafter which to pronounce the name of filled me with terror:
eternity. And my departure from this earth,--this earth which I had
scarcely seen, of which I had seen no more than the tiniest and most
colorless corner--seemed to me a thing very near at hand. With a
blending of impatience and mortal fear I thought of myself as soon to
be clothed in a resplendent white robe, as soon to be seated in a
great splendor of light among the multitude of angels and chosen ones
around the throne of the Blessed Lamb; I saw myself in the midst of a
great moving orb that, to the sound of music, oscillated slowly and
continuously in the infinite void of heaven.




                             CHAPTER XIV.



"Once upon a time a little girl when she opened a large fruit that had
come from the colonies, a big creature came out of it, a green
creature, and it bit her and that made her die."

It was my little friend Antoinette (she was six and I seven) who was
telling me the story which had been suggested to her because we were
about to break and divide an apricot between us. We were at the
extreme end of her garden in the lovely month of June under a
branching apricot tree. We sat very close together upon the same stool
in a house about as big as a bee-hive, which we had built for our
exclusive use out of old planks. Our dwelling was covered with pieces
of foreign matting that had come from the Antilles packed about some
boxes of coffee. The sunbeams pierced the roof, which was of a coarse
straw-colored material, and the warm breeze that stirred the leaves of
the trees about us made the sunlight dance as it fell upon our faces
and aprons. (During at least two summers it had been our favorite
amusement to build, in isolated nooks, houses like the one described
in Robinson Crusoe, and thus hidden away we would sit together and
chat.) In the story of the little girl who was bitten by the big
creature this phrase, "a very large fruit from the colonies," had
suddenly plunged me into a reverie. And I had a vision of trees, of
strange fruits, and of forests filled with marvelously colored birds.
Ah! how much those magical but disturbing words, "the colonies"
conveyed to me in my childhood. To me they meant at that time all
tropical and distant countries, which I invariably thought of as
filled with giant palms, exquisite flowers, strange black people and
great animals. Although my ideas were so confused I had an almost true
conception, amounting to an intuition, of their mournful splendor and
their enervating melancholy.

I think that I saw a palm for the first time in an illustrated book
called the "Young Naturalists," by Madame Ulliac-Tremadeure; the book
was one of my New Year's gifts, and I read some parts of it upon New
Year's evening. (Green-house palms had not at that time been brought
to our little town.)

The illustrator had placed two of these unfamiliar trees at the edge
of a sea-shore along which negroes were passing. Recently I was
curious enough to hunt in the little yellow, faded book for that
picture, and truly I wonder how that illustration had the power to
create the very least of my dreams unless it were that my immature
mind was already leavened by the memory of memories.

"The colonies!" Ah! how can I give an adequate idea of all that awoke
in my mind at the sound of these words? A fruit from there, a bird or
a shell, had instantly the greatest charm for me.

There were a number of things from the tropics in little Antoinette's
home: a parrot, birds of many colors in a cage, and collections of
shells and insects. In one of her mamma's bureau drawers I had seen
quaint necklaces of fragrant berries; in the garret, where we
sometimes rummaged, we found skins of animals and peculiar bags and
cases upon which could still be made out the names of towns in the
Antilles; and a faint tropical odor scented the entire house.

Antoinette's garden, as I have said, was separated from ours by a very
low wall overgrown with roses and jasmine. And the very old
pomegranate tree growing there spread its branches into our yard, and
at the blooming season its coral-red petals were scattered upon our
grass.

Often we spoke from one house to the other:

"Can I come over and play with you?" I would ask. "Will your mamma
allow me?"

"No, because I have been naughty and I am being punished." (That
happened very often.)--Such an answer always grieved me a great deal;
but I must confess that it was more on account of my disappointment
over the parrot and the tropical things than because of her
punishment.

Little Antoinette had been born in the colonies, but, curiously
enough, she never seemed to value that fact, and they had very little
charm for her, indeed she scarcely remembered them. I would have given
everything I possessed in the world to have seen, if only for the
briefest time, one of those distant countries, inaccessible to me, as
I well knew.

With a regret that was almost anguish I thought, alas! that in my life
as minister, live as long as I might, I would never, never see those
enchanting lands.




                             CHAPTER XV.



I will now describe a game that gave Antoinette and me the greatest
pleasure during those two delicious summers.

We pretended to be two caterpillars, and we would creep along the
ground upon our stomachs and our knees and hunt for leaves to eat.
After having done that for some time we played that we were very very
sleepy, and we would lie down in a corner under the trees and cover
our heads with our white aprons--we had become cocoons. We remained in
this condition for some time, and so thoroughly did we enter into the
role of insects in a state of metamorphosis, that any one listening
would have heard pass between us, in a tone of the utmost seriousness,
conversations of this nature:

"Do you think that you will soon be able to fly?"

"Oh yes! I'll be flying very soon; I feel them growing in my shoulders
now . . . they'll soon unfold." ("They" naturally referred to wings.)

Finally we would wake up, stretch ourselves, and without saying
anything we conveyed by our manner our astonishment at the great
transformation in our condition. . . .

Then suddenly we began to run lightly and very nimbly in our tiny
shoes; in our hands we held the corners of our pinafores which we
waved as if they were wings; we ran and ran, and chased each other,
and flew about making sharp and fantastic curves as we went. We
hastened from flower to flower and smelled all of them, and we
continually imitated the restlessness of giddy moths; we imagined too
that we were imitating their buzzing when we exclaimed: "Hou ou ou!" a
noise we made by filling the cheeks with air and puffing it out
quickly through the half-closed mouth.




                             CHAPTER XVI.



The butterflies, the poor butterflies that have gone out of fashion in
these days, played, I am ashamed to say, a large part in my life
during my childhood, as did also the flies, beetles and lady-bugs and
all the insects that are found upon flowers and in the grass. Although
it gave me a great deal of pain to kill them, I was making a
collection of them, and I was almost always seen with a butterfly net
in my hand. Those flying about in our yard, that had strayed our way
from the country, were not very beautiful it must be confessed, but I
had the garden and woods of Limoise which all the summer long was a
hunting-ground ever full of surprises and wonders.

But the caricatures by Topffer upon this subject made me thoughtful;
and when Lucette one day caught me with several butterflies in my hat,
and in her incomparably mocking voice called me, "Mr. Cryptogram," I
was much humiliated.




                            CHAPTER XVII.



The poor old grandmother who sang so constantly was dying.

We were all standing about her bed at nightfall one spring evening.
She had been ailing scarcely more than forty-eight hours; but the
doctor said that on account of her great age she could not rally, and
he pronounced her end to be very near.

Her mind had become clear; she no longer mistook our names, and in a
sweet calm voice she begged us to remain near her--it was doubtless
the voice of other days, the one that I had never heard before.

As I stood close to my father's side I turned my eyes from my dying
grandmother, and they wandered about the room with its old-fashioned
furniture. I looked especially at the pictures of bouquets in vases
that hung upon the wall. Oh! those poor little water colors in my
grandmother's room, how ingenuous they were! They all bore this
inscription: "A Bouquet for my mother," and under this there was a
little verse of four lines dedicated to her which I could now read and
understand. These works of art had been painted by my father in his
early boyhood, and he had presented them to his mother upon each
joyful anniversary. The poor, unpretentious little pictures bore
testimony to the humble life of those early days, and they spoke of
the sacred intimacy of mother and son,--they had been painted during
the time which followed those great ordeals, the wars, the English
invasion and the burning over of the country by the enemy. For the
first time I realized that my grandmother too had been young; that,
without doubt, before the trouble with her head, my father had loved
her as I loved my mamma, and I felt that he would sorrow greatly when
he lost her; I felt sorry for him and I was also full of remorse
because I had laughed at her singing, and had been amused when she
spoke to her image reflected in the looking-glass.

They sent me down stairs. On different pretexts, the reason for which
I did not understand, they kept me away from the room until the day
was over; then they took me to the house of our friends, the D----s,
where I was to have dinner with Lucette.

When, at about half past eight, I returned home with my nurse, I
insisted upon going straight to my grandmother's room.

When I entered I was struck with the order and the air of profound
peace that pervaded the room. My father was sitting motionless at the
head of the bed--he was in the shadow, the open curtains were draped
with great precision, and on the pillow, just in its middle, was the
head of my sleeping grandmother; her whole position had about it
something very regular--something that suggested eternal rest.

My mother and sister were seated beside a chiffonier near the door,
from which place they had kept watch over my grandmother during her
illness. As soon as I entered they signalled to me with their hands as
if to say: "Softly, softly, make no noise; she is asleep." The shade
of their lamp threw a vivid light upon the material they were busied
with, a number of little silk squares, brown, yellow, gray, etc., that
I recognized as pieces of their old dresses and hat ribbons.

At first I thought that they were working upon things which it is
customary to prepare for people about to die; but when I, in a very
low voice and with some uneasiness, questioned them about it, they
explained that they were making sachets which were to be sold for
charity.

I said that I wished to bid grandmother good night before retiring,
and they allowed me to go towards the bed; but before I reached the
middle of the room they, after glancing quickly at each other, changed
their minds.

"No, no," they said in a very low voice, "come back, you might disturb
her."

But before they spoke I came to a halt of myself, I was overwhelmed
with terror--I understood.

Although fear kept me fixed to the spot I noted with astonishment that
my grandmother was not at all disagreeable to look at; I had never
before seen a dead person, and I had imagined until then, that when
the spirit took its departure all that remained was a grinning,
hideous skeleton. On the contrary my grandmother had upon her face an
extremely sweet and tranquil smile; she was as beautiful as ever, and
her face appeared to be rejuvenated and filled with a holy peace.

Then there passed through my mind one of those sad flashes which
sometimes come to little children and permit them to see for a moment
into hidden depths, and I reflected: How can grandmother be in heaven,
how am I to understand the division of the one body into two parts,
for that which was left for interment, was it not my grandmother
herself, ah! was it not she even to the very expression that she bore
in life?

After that I stole away with a bruised heart and downcast spirit, not
daring to ask a question of any one, fearful lest what I had so
unerringly divined would be confirmed, I did not wish to hear the
dread and terrible word pronounced. . . .

                  *       *       *       *       *

For a long time thereafter little silken sachet bags were always
associated in my mind with the idea of death.




                            CHAPTER XVIII.



I still have in my memory, almost agonizing impressions of a serious
illness which I had when I was about eight years old. Those about me
called it scarlet fever, and its very name seemed to have a diabolical
quality.

I had the fever in March, which was cold and blustering and dreary
that year, and every evening as night fell, if by chance my mother was
not near me, a great sadness would overwhelm my soul. (It was an
oppression coming on at twilight, from which animals, and beings with
a temperament like mine suffer almost equally.)

My curtains were kept open, and I always had a view of the pathetic
looking little table with its cups of gruel and bottles of medicines.
And as I gazed at these things, so suggestive of sickness, they took
on strange shapes in the darkness of the silent room,--and at such
times there passed through my head a procession of grotesque, hideous
and alarming images.

Upon two successive evenings at dusk there appeared to me, in the half
delirium of fever, two persons who caused me the most extreme terror.

The first one was an old woman, hump-backed and very ugly, but with a
fascinating ugliness, who without my hearing her open the door,
without my seeing any one rise to meet her, stole noiselessly to my
side. She departed, however, without speaking to me; but as she turned
to go her hump became visible, and I saw that there was an opening in
it, and there popped out from this hole the green head of a parrot
which the old woman carried in her hump. This creature called out,
"Cuckoo," in a thin, squeaking, far-away voice, and then withdrew
again into the frightful old hag's hump. Oh! when I heard that
"Cuckoo!" a cold perspiration formed on my forehead; but suddenly the
woman disappeared and then I realized that it was only a dream.

The next evening a tall thin man, clothed in the black dress of a
minister, appeared to me. He did not come near me, but kept close to
the wall and whirled, with body all bent over, rapidly and noiselessly
about the room. His miserable, thin legs and the gown of his dress
stood out stiff and straight as he turned quickly. And--most horrible
of all--he had for a head the skull of a large white bird with a long
beak, which was a monstrous exaggeration of a sea-mew's skull,
bleached by the sun and wind and waves, that I had the previous summer
found upon the beach at the Island. (I believe this old man's visit
coincided with the time when I was worst, almost in danger.) After he
had made one or two revolutions about the room, he quickly and
silently began to rise from the floor. Ever moving his thin legs he
reached the cornice, then higher and higher still he rose, above the
pictures and the looking-glasses, until he was lost to sight in the
twilight shadows that lay near the ceiling.

And for two or three years after this event the faces of those visions
haunted me. On winter evenings I thought of them with a shudder as I
mounted the stairway, which at that period it was not customary to
light. "If they should be there," I would say to myself; "suppose one
of them is lying in wait to pursue me, and stretch out their hands and
try to catch me by the legs."

And truly I will not be sure that I would not now feel, should I
encourage myself, some of the old-time fear which that woman and man
inspired in me; they were for some time at the head of the list of my
childhood terrors, and for very long they led the procession of
visions and bad dreams.

Many gloomy apparitions haunted the first years of my life which
otherwise were so uncommonly sweet. I was especially addicted to
indulging in sad reflections at nightfall; I had impressions of my
career being cut short by an early death. Too carefully sheltered and
protected at this period, and yet in some measure forced mentally, I
may be likened to a flower that lacks color and vitality because it
has been raised in an unwholesome atmosphere. I should have been
surrounded by hardy, mischievous, noisy playmates of my own age and
sex, but instead of that I played only with gentle little girls. I was
always careful and precise in my manners, and my curled hair and
sedate bearing gave me the appearance of a little eighteenth century
nobleman.




                             CHAPTER XIX.



After that long fever, the very name of which has a sinister sound, I
recall the delight I felt when they allowed me to go out into the air,
when I was permitted to go down into our beloved yard. The day chosen
for my first airing was a radiantly beautiful and clear morning in
April. Seated under the bower of jasmine and honeysuckle I felt as if
I were experiencing the enchantment of paradise, of another Eden.
Everything was budding and blossoming; without my knowledge, during
the time that I was confined to my bed, this wonderful drama of the
spring had enacted itself upon the earth. I had not often seen this
wonderful and magical renewal which has delighted man through all the
ages, and to which only the very aged seem indifferent; it ravished me
and I allowed my joy to take possession of me almost to the point of
intoxication.--Oh! that pure, warm, soft air; the glorious sunlight
and the tender, fresh green of the young plants and the budding trees
that already cast a little shade. And in myself there was an unwonted
strength that bespoke recovery, and I rejoiced mightily when I
breathed in the sweet air and felt the flood of new life.

My brother was a tall fellow of twenty-one who had the freedom of the
house and grounds in which to work out any of his fancies. During my
convalescence I entertained myself greatly speculating about something
he was busy with in the garden, which something I was dying of
impatience to see. At the end of the yard, in a lovely nook under an
old plum tree, my brother was making a tiny lake; he had dug it out
and cemented it like a cistern, and from the country round about he
procured stones and quantities of moss with which to make the banks
about the lake romantic looking; he also constructed rocky elevations
and grottoes out of stones and mosses.

And this work was finished the day that I went out for the first time;
they had even put little gold fish into the water, and they turned on
the tiny fountain and it played in my honor.

I approached it with ecstasy, and I found that it greatly surpassed in
beauty anything that my imagination had been able to conjure up. And
when my brother told me it was mine, I felt a joy so intense that it
seemed to me it must last forever. Oh! what unexpected joy to possess
it for my very own! And what happiness to know that I could enjoy it
every single day during the warm and beautiful months that were to
come. And the thought of being able to live out of doors again, the
prospect of playing in every nook of that lovely garden, as I had done
the previous summer, was rapture to me.

I remained at the edge of the pond a long time, looking at it and
admiring it unceasingly, and I breathed in the sweet, mild spring air,
and warmed myself in the radiant sunlight so long denied to me. The
old plum tree above my head, planted so long ago by one of my
ancestors, and now almost at the end of its usefulness, spread its
lacy curtain of new leaves to the tender blue of the sky, and the tiny
fountain in its shade continued its tuneful melody as if it were a
little hurdy-gurdy celebrating my return to health.

To-day that old plum tree is dead and its trunk the only thing left of
it, and spared out of respect, is covered, like a ruin, with ivy
vines.

But the pond, with its grottoes and islets, still remains intact; time
has given it the appearance of genuine nature herself. Its greenish
stones look old and decayed; the mosses, the delicate little plants
brought from the river, and the rushes and wild iris have acclimated
themselves, and dragon flies that stray through the town take refuge
there--a bit of wild nature has established itself in that little
corner and I hope it will never be disturbed.

I am more loyally attached to that spot than to any other, although I
have loved many places; in no other one have I found so much peace;
there I feel tranquil, there I refresh myself and acquire youth and
new life. That little corner is my sacred Mecca, so much indeed is it
to me that should any one destroy it I would feel as if some vital
thing in my life had lost balance, would feel that I had missed my
footing, or almost imagine that it presaged the beginning of my end.

The reverent feeling that I have for the place has been born, I
believe, from my sea-faring life, with its long voyages to distant
places and its dreary exiles during which I thought and dreamed of it
constantly.

There is in particular one little grotto for which I have an especial
affection: the memory of it has often, in times of depression and
melancholy, during the years of weary exile heartened me.

After the angel Azrael had so cruelly passed our way, after reverses
of many sorts, and during that sad term when I was a wanderer on the
face of the earth, and my widowed mother and my aunt Claire were left
alone in the beloved but deserted home that was almost as silent as a
tomb, I experienced many a heartache as I thought of the dear
hearthstone and of the things so familiar to my childhood that were
doubtless going to ruin through neglect. I felt especially anxious to
know if the storms of winter and the hands of time had destroyed the
delicate arch of that grotto; and strange as it may seem, if those
little moss-covered rocks had fallen in I would have felt that an
almost irreparable breach had been made in my own life.

At the side of the pond there is an old gray wall which is an integral
part of the corner that I call my Holy Mecca; I think it is the very
centre of the sacred place, and I recall the tiniest details of it. I
can picture to myself the scarcely visible mosses that grow there, and
the gaps made by time, which the spiders now inhabit. Growing up at
the back of the wall there is an arbor of ivy and honeysuckles whose
shade I sought daily every beautiful summer day for the purpose of
studying my lessons. But I lounged there lazily, as a school-boy will,
and allowed all my attention to be absorbed by those gray stones with
their teeming world of insects. Not only do I love and venerate that
old wall as the Moslems love their holiest mosque, but I regard it
also as something which actually protects me; as something which
conserves my life and prolongs my youth. I would not suffer any one to
change it in the least, and should it be demolished I would feel as if
the very supports under my life were insecure. May it not be because
certain things persist, and are known to us throughout our lives, that
we borrow from thence delusions in regard to our own stability and our
own continuance. Seeing that they abide we suppose that we cannot
change nor cease to be.

Personally I cannot explain these sentiments of mine in any other way
than to regard them as some sort of fetich worship.

And when I consider that those stones are very like other stones, that
they have been brought from I know not where, by whom I care not, to
be built into a wall by workmen who lived and died a century before I
was even thought of, I realize the childishness of the illusion, which
I indulge in spite of myself, that it can extend any sort of spiritual
protection to me; I comprehend only too well what a frail and unstable
base has that that symbolizes for me the permanency of life.

Those who have never had a permanent home, but who have from infancy
been taken from place to place, living in lodgings meantime, may not
be able to appreciate these sentiments.

But among those who have daily gathered about the same hearthstone,
there are, I am sure, many who, without confessing it, are susceptible
in varying degrees to impressions of this sort. And do not such people
often, because of an old stone wall, a garden known and loved since
childhood, an old terrace which has become in indestructible part of
their memory, or an old tree that has not changed form within their
lives, seek a warrant for their own hope of immortality?

And doubtless, alas! before their birth these objects lent the same
delusive countenance to others, to those unknown now turned to dust
and gone to nothingness, who may not even have been of their blood and
race.




                             CHAPTER XX.



It was about the middle of the summer, after my severe illness, that I
went to the Island for a long visit. I was taken there by my brother
and my sister, the latter was like a second mother to me. After a
sojourn of several weeks with our relatives at St. Pierre Oleron (my
good Aunt Claire and her two old unmarried daughters) we went alone,
we three, to a fishing village upon the Long-Beach, which at that time
was entirely off the line of travel. The Long-Beach is that portion of
the Island commanding a view of the ocean over which the west winds
blow ceaselessly. Upon this coast, which extends without a curve
straight and seemingly limitless, with the majestic sweep of the
desert of Sahara, the waves roll and break with a mighty noise. Here
there are to be seen many uneven waste spaces; it is a region of sand
where stunted trees and dwarfish evergreen oaks shelter themselves
behind the dunes. A curious kind of wild flower, a pink and fragrant
carnation, blooms there profusely all summer long. Two or three
villages, composed of humble little cottages, whitewashed like the
bungalows of Algeria, break the loneliness of this region. These homes
have planted about them such flowers as can best resist the sea-winds.
Dark skinned fishermen and their families, a hardy honest people,
still very primitive at the time of which I write, live here; even
sea-bathers had not found their way to these shores.

In an old forgotten copy-book where my sister had written down (in a
stilted manner) the impressions of that summer I find this description
of our lodgings.

"We dwell in the centre of the village, in the square, at the Mayor's
house.

"This house has two ells, which are spacious beyond measure.

"Its dazzling whitewashed surfaces sparkle in the sun, its window
shutters are fastened with large iron hooks and painted a dark green
as is the custom here. The flower bed that is planted in the form of a
wreath all around the house grows vigorously in the sand. The day-
lilies, one surpassing the other in beauty, open their yellow, pink
and red blossoms, and the mignonette beds which at noon-time are fully
abloom waft on the air an odor that is sweet as the scent of orange
blossoms.

"Opposite us a little path hollowed out of the sand descends rapidly
to the edge of the sea."

My first really intimate acquaintance with the sea-wrack, crabs, sea-
nettles, jelly-fish, and the thousand and one other small creatures
that inhabit the ocean, dates from this visit to the Long-Beach.

And during this same summer I fell in love for the first time--my
beloved was a little village girl. But here, so that the story may be
related more accurately, I will allow my sister, through the medium of
the old copy-book, to speak again--I merely copy:

"Dozens of the children (fishermen's boys and girls), tanned and brown
and with little legs all bare, followed Pierre, or audaciously hurried
before him, and from time to time turned and looked at him wonderingly
with their beautiful dark eyes. At that time a little gentleman was a
rare enough spectacle in that part of the country to be worth the
trouble of running after.

"Every day Pierre, accompanied by this crowd, would descend to the
beach by means of the little footpath scooped out of the sand. There
he would run and pick up the shells that, upon that coast, are so
exquisitely beautiful. They are yellow, pink, purple and many other
bright colors, and they have the most delicate and varied forms.
Pierre admired them greatly, and the little ones who always followed
him would silently offer him hands full.

"Veronica was the most attentive of all. She was about his own age,
perhaps a little younger, six or seven years of age. She had a sweet,
dreamy little face, a rather pale complexion and lovely gray eyes. She
was protected from the heat by a large white sunbonnet; a kichenote,
as they call it in that part of the country, is a very old word, and
means a large bonnet made of linen and cardboard, which projects over
the face like the head-dress of a nun. Veronica would slip near
Pierre, take possession of his hand, and keep it in hers. Thus they
walked along contentedly without saying a word. They stopped from time
to time to kiss each other. 'I wish to kiss you,' Veronica would say,
and as she did so she embraced him tenderly with her little arms. Then
after Pierre had allowed her the caress he would, in his turn, kiss
her vehemently on her pretty, little, plump cheeks. . . .

                  *       *       *       *       *

"Little Veronica used to run and seat herself upon our doorstep as
soon as she was up; and there she remained like a faithful, loyal
spaniel. As soon as Pierre woke he thought of her being there, and he
would immediately get out of bed, have himself quickly washed, and
stand quietly to have his blond curls combed out, and then run to find
his little friend. They embraced each other and prattled of the events
of the day before; sometimes Veronica, before coming to our house to
wait for Pierre, made a trip to the seashore and gathered an apron
full of the beautiful shells as a love offering to her sweetheart.

"One day, at about the end of August, after a long reverie, during
which Pierre had perhaps weighed and considered the difficult question
of the social difference between them, he said; 'Veronica you and I
must get married some day; I will ask permission of my parents when
the time comes.'"

Then my sister speaks of our departure:

"Upon the 15th of September it was necessary for us to leave the
village. Pierre had made a collection of shells, sea-weeds, star-fish
and pebbles; he was insatiable and wished to carry all of them away
with him, and with Veronica's aid he packed a great many into his
boxes.

"One morning a large carriage arrived at St. Pierre to take us away.
The peace of the village was broken by the noise of the little bells
and the cracking of the driver's whip. Pierre with the greatest care
placed his own packets into the carriage and then we three quickly
took our places. With eyes full of sadness Pierre gazed out of the
carriage window towards the sandy path that led down to the beach--and
at his little friend who stood there weeping."

In conclusion I will copy word for word the reflection found at the
end of the faded book which was written down by my sister during that
same summer.

"Then, and not for the first time, I fell into an uneasy reverie that
had to do with Pierre, and I asked myself: 'What will become of the
little boy? And what will become of his little friend whose figure we
could still see outlined at the now far distant end of the road. How
much despair does that little heart feel; how much anguish at being
thus abandoned?'"

"What will become of that boy?" Alas! what indeed! His whole life was
to be similar to that summer of his childhood. To know the sorrow of
many farewells; to desire to take with me a thousand trifles of no
appreciable value, to hunger to have about me a world of beloved
souvenirs,--but especially to say good bye to wild little creatures
(loved perhaps just because they were ingenuous children of nature),--
these things were to make up the sum of my life.

The two or three days' journey home (broken into by a visit to our old
aunts) seemed to me very nearly endless. My impatience to see and
embrace mamma kept me from sleeping. I had not seen her for almost two
months! My sister was the only person in the world who, at that time,
could have made such a long separation from my mamma endurable to me.

We reached the continent safely, and after a three-hours ride in the
carriage that we found awaiting us at the boat-landing, we passed
through the ramparts of our town. Ah! at last I saw my mother; I once
more saw her dear face and sweet smile.--And now at this distant time
I find that one of my clearest and most persistent memories is her
beloved and still youthful face and her beautiful dark hair.

When we arrived at the house I ran to visit my little lake and its
grottoes, and I hurried to the arbor that grew against the old wall.
But my eyes had become so accustomed to the immensity of the sandy
beach and the ocean that all of these things appeared shrunken,
diminished, walled-in and mean. The leaves were turning yellow, and
although it was still warm there was a promise of early autumn in the
air. With fear and dread I thought of the dull and cold days which
would soon be upon us; and when, with a heavy heart, I began to unpack
my boxes of sea-weed and shells, I was overcome with grief because I
was not still upon the Island. I felt disquieted too about Veronica
who would have to be there without me during the winter, and suddenly
my eyes overflowed with tears at the thought that I might never again
hold her dear little sun-burned hands in mine.




                             CHAPTER XXI.



The time now arrived for me to begin regular lessons and to write
exercises in copy-books, which I invariably smeared with ink--ah! what
gloom and dreariness suddenly came into my life.

I remember that I performed my tasks spiritlessly and sulkily, and
that my lessons bored me inexpressibly. And since I wish to be very
sincere, it is necessary for me to add that my teachers also were
well-nigh intolerable to me.

Alas! well do I remember the one who first taught me Latin (rosa, the
rose; cornu, the horn; tonitru, the thunder). This tutor was very old
and bent, and as sad of face as a rainy November day. He is dead now,
the poor old fellow--sweet peace to his soul! He was exactly like that
"Mr. Ratin" hit off in caricature so neatly by Topffer; he had all the
marks, even to the wart with the three hairs, and fine wrinkles beyond
number at the end of his old nose; to me his face was the
personification of all that was hideous and disgusting.

He arrived every day precisely at noon; and a chill would pass through
me when I heard his knock which I would have recognized among a
thousand.

Always after his departure, I attempted to purify that part of my
table where his elbow had rested by rubbing it hard with the napkin
which I had taken clandestinely from the linen-closet. And the
repulsion extended itself to the very books, already unattractive
enough to me, which he touched; I even tore certain leaves out of them
because I suspected that he had handled them a great deal.

My books were always full of ink blots, always stained and covered
with smeared sketches and pictures, which one draws idly when his
attention wanders from his task. I who was usually so careful and
proper a child had such a detestation for the books which I was
obliged to learn from, that I abused them in the commonest fashion;
altogether I was a miserable pupil. I found--and this is the
astonishing part--that all my scruples of conscience deserted me when
my teacher questioned me in regard to the time I had spent upon my
lessons (I usually studied them in a mad hurry at the last moment); my
aversion for study was the first thing that caused me to temporize
with my conscience.

In spite, however, of a pricking conscience, I still continued to give
only a passing glance at my lessons at the very last moment. But
generally "Mr. Ratin" would write "good" or "very good" upon the paper
which it was my duty each evening to show to my father.

I believe that if he, or the other professors who succeeded him, could
have suspected the truth, could have guessed that out of their
presence my mind did not dwell for more than five minutes a day upon
what they had taught me, their honest heads would have split with
indignation.




                            CHAPTER XXII.



During the course of the winter which followed my visit to the Long-
Beach a great change took place in our family--my brother departed for
his first campaign.

He was, as I have said, about fourteen years older than I. I had had
very little time to become acquainted with him, to attach myself to
him, for his preparation for his vocation made it necessary for him to
be away from home a great deal. I scarcely ever went into his room
where, scattered upon the table, there was an appalling number of
large books. This room was pervaded with the strong odor of tobacco;
and I dared not go near it for fear that I would meet his comrades,
young officers, or students like himself. I had heard, also, that he
was not always well-behaved, that sometimes he did not come in until
very late at night, and that often my father had found it necessary to
give him a serious talking to; secretly I greatly disapproved of his
conduct.

But his approaching departure strengthened my affection, and caused me
extreme sorrow.

He was going to Polynesia, to Tahiti, almost to the end of the world,
and he expected to be away four years. To me that seemed an almost
endless absence, for it represented half of my own age.

I watched, with the greatest interest, the preparations that he made
for his voyage. The iron-bound trunks were packed with care. He
wrapped the gilt-embroidered uniform and his sword in a quantity of
tissue paper, and put them away with the same care one bestows upon a
mummy when it is relaid in its metal case. All of these things
augmented the impression that I had of the distance and dangers of the
long voyage about to be undertaken by my brother.

A sort of melancholy rested upon every one in the house, which became
deeper and more and more noticeable as the day for the separation drew
near. At our meals we were more silent; advice from my father and
assurances from my brother was the substance of most of the
conversations, and I listened meditatively without saying a word.

The day before my brother left he confided to my care--and I was
greatly honored to have him do so--the many fragile little things that
he had upon his mantel-piece; these he bade me guard faithfully until
his return.

He then made me a present of a handsome gilt edged, illustrated book
entitled, "A Voyage in Polynesia." It was the only book that in my
early childhood I had an affection for, and I constantly turned its
pages with eager pleasure. In the front of it there was an engraving
of a very pretty dark woman who, crowned with reeds, was sitting
gracefully under a palm tree. Under this picture was printed:
"Portrait of her Majesty, Pomare IV., Queen of Tahiti." Further over
in the book there was a picture of two beautiful maidens, with naked
shoulders and crowned heads, standing at the edge of the sea, and this
was entitled: "Two Young Tahitian Girls upon the Beach."

Upon the day of my brother's departure, at the last hour, the
preparations being over, and the large trunks closed and locked, we
gathered in the parlor as solemnly as if we had come together for a
funeral. A chapter of the Bible was read and then we had family
prayers. . . . Four years! and during that time the width of the earth
between us and our loved one!

I recall particularly my mother's face during the farewell scene; she
was seated in an arm chair beside my brother. After the prayer she had
upon her face an infinitely sweet, but wistful smile, and an
expression of submissive trust; but suddenly an unexpected change came
over her features, and in spite of her efforts at self-control her
tears flowed. I had never before seen my mother weep, and it caused me
the greatest anguish.

The first few days after his departure I had a feeling of sadness, and
I missed him greatly; often and often I went into his room, and the
little treasures which he had confided to my care were as sacred as
holy relics.

Upon a map of the world I had my parents point out to me the route of
his journey, a journey which would take about five months. To me his
return belonged to an inconceivable and unreal future; and, most
strange of all, what spoiled for me the pleasure of his home-coming,
was that I at that time would be twelve or thirteen years of age--
almost a big boy in fact.

Unlike most other children,--especially unlike those of to-day--who
are eager to become men and women as speedily as possible, I had a
terror of growing up, which became more and more accentuated as I grew
older. I argued about it to myself, and I wrote about it, and when any
one asked me why I had such a feeling I answered, since I could not
think of a better reason: "It seems to me that it will be very
wearisome to be a man." I believe that it is an extremely singular
state of mind, an altogether unique one perhaps, this shrinking away
from life at its very beginning; I was not able to see a horizon
before me: I could not picture my future to myself as so many can;
before me there was nothing but impenetrable darkness, a great leaden
curtain shut off my view.




                            CHAPTER XXIII.



"Cakes, cakes, my good hot cakes!" Thus, in a plaintive voice, sang
the old woman peddler who regularly, upon winter evenings, during the
first ten or twelve years of my life, passed under our window.--When I
think of those bygone days I hear again her insistent refrain.

It is with the memory of Sundays that the song of the "good hot cakes"
is most closely associated; for upon that evening, having no duties to
perform in the way of lessons, I sat with my parents in the parlor
upon the ground floor which overlooked the street; therefore, when
almost upon the stroke of nine, the poor old woman passed along the
sidewalk, and her sonorous chant broke into the stillness of the
frosty night I was near enough to hear her distinctly.

She presaged the coming of cold weather as swallows announce the
advent of the spring. After a succession of cool autumnal days, the
first time we heard her song we would say: "Well, we may conclude that
winter is really here."

This parlor where we sat together seemed a very immense room to me. It
was simply and tastefully furnished and arranged: the walls and the
woodwork were brown, decorated with strips of gold: the furniture,
dating from the time of Louis Philippe, was upholstered in red velvet;
the family portraits were in severe black and gold frames; in the
centre of the table, in the place of honor, there was a large Bible
that had been printed in the sixteenth century. This was a precious
heirloom that had come down to us from our Huguenot ancestors who had,
at that time, been persecuted for their faith. We had baskets and
vases of flowers disposed about the room, a custom which then was not
so usual as it is now.

It was always a delicious moment for me when we left the dining-room
and went into the parlor, for the latter room had an air of great
peace and comfort; and when all the family were seated there in a
circle, mother, grandmother and aunts, I began to skip about noisily
in their midst from very joy at being surrounded by so many loved
ones; and I waited impatiently for them to begin the little games
which they were in the habit of playing with me early in the evening.
Our neighbors, the D----'s, came to see us every Sunday; it was a
time-honored custom in our two families, between whom there existed a
friendship that had its inception in the country generations before
our time; it was a friendship which had been handed down to us as a
precious heritage. At about eight o'clock, when I recognized their
ring, I jumped for joy, and I could not restrain myself from running
to the street door to meet them, for Lucette, my dear friend, always
came with her parents.

Alas! how sad is my reverie when I think of the beloved and venerated
forms of those who surrounded me upon those happy Sunday evenings; the
majority of them have passed away, and their faces, when I seek to
recall them, are dim and misty--some are altogether lost from memory.

Then friends and relatives would begin to play, for the purpose of
giving me pleasure, the little games of which I was so fond; they
played "Marriage," "My Lady's Toilet," "The Horned Knight," and "The
Lovely Shepherdess." Everybody took part in them, even the old people,
and my grand aunt Bertha, the eldest of all, was irresistibly droll.

The refrain became louder rapidly, for the singer trotted along with
short, quick steps, and very soon she was under our window, where she
kept repeating her song in a shrill, cracked voice.

When they would allow me to do so, it was my greatest pleasure to run
to the door, followed by an indulgent aunt, not so much for the
purpose of buying the cakes, however, for they were coarse and
unpalatable, as to stop the old woman and talk with her.

The poor old peddler would approach with a courtesy, proud of being
called, and standing with one foot upon the threshold she would
present her basket for our inspection. Her neat dress was set off by
the white linen sleeves that she always wore. While she uncovered her
basket I would look longingly, like a caged wild-bird, far down the
cold and deserted streets.

I liked to breathe in great draughts of the icy air, to look hastily
into the black night lying beyond the door, and then to run back into
the warm and comfortable parlor,--meantime, the monotonous refrain
grew fainter and fainter as it died away into the mean streets that
lay close to the ramparts and the harbor. The old woman's route was
always the same, and my thoughts followed her with a singular interest
as long as the song continued.

I felt a great pity for the poor old woman still wandering about in
the cold night, while we were snug and warm at home; but mingled with
that feeling there was another sentiment so confused and vague that I
give it too much importance, even though I touch upon it never so
lightly. It was this: I had a sort of restless curiosity to see those
squalid streets through which the old peddler went so bravely, and to
which I had never been taken. These streets, that I saw from the
distance, were deserted in the day time, but there in the evening,
from time immemorial, sailors made merry; sometimes the sound of their
singing was so loud that we could hear it as we sat in our parlor.

What could be going on there? What was the nature of that fun, the
echo of whose din we heard so distinctly? How did they amuse
themselves, these sailors, who had but newly come over the sea from
distant countries where the sun was always hot? What life was careless
and simple and free as theirs!

My emotions lose their force when I endeavor to interpret them, and my
words seem very inept. But I know that seeds of trouble, and seeds of
hope (to develop how I could not guess) were at about this time
planted in my little being. When, with my cakes in my hand, I re-
entered the parlor where the family sat talking together quietly, I
felt for a quick, almost inappreciable, moment suffocated and
imprisoned.

At half-past nine, because of me seldom later, tea was served, and
with it we had thin slices of bread, spread with the most delicious
butter, and cut with the care one gives to very few things in these
days.

Then at about eleven o'clock, after a reading from the Bible and a
prayer, we retired.

As I lay in my little white bed I was always more restless Sunday
nights than at any other time. Immediately ahead of me there was the
prospect of Mr. Ratin whom morning would surely bring, and he was
always a most painful sight to me after a respite; also I was full of
regret because Sunday was over, always over so quickly!--and I felt a
great weariness when I thought of the many lessons it would be
necessary for me to prepare before Sunday came again. Sometimes, as I
lay there, I would hear the songs the sailors sung as they passed in
the distant lands and noble ships; and a sort of dull and indefinite
longing took possession of me and I felt as if I would like to be out
of doors myself in search of pleasurable and exciting adventure. I
hungered to be in the bracing wintry night air, or in one of those
foreign lands where the sun beats down with tropical warmth; I yearned
to be out and singing like them, as loud as possible, just for the joy
of being alive.




                            CHAPTER XXIV.



"And I beheld, and heard an angel flying through the midst of heaven,
saying with a loud voice, Woe, woe, woe, to the inhabiters of the
earth!"

Besides reading the Bible with the family every evening, I read a
chapter from it each morning before rising.

My Bible was a very small one, with exceedingly fine print. Pressed
between its pages were some flowers that I was very fond of;
especially was I of the spray of pink larkspur, which had the power of
bringing very distinctly before my mind's eye the stubble fields
(gleux) of the Island of Oleron where I had gathered it.

I do not know exactly how to explain the word gleux, but it means the
stubble which remains after the grain is harvested, and those fields
of short pale yellow stalks that the autumn sun dries and turns a
bright golden. In these fields upon the Island, overrun by chirping
grasshoppers, late corn-flowers and white and pink larkspur come up,
grow very high, and blossom.

And upon winter mornings, before beginning to read, I always looked at
the spray of flowers which still retained its delicate color, and
there appeared to me a vision of the Island, and I longed for the
summer time and for the warm and sunny fields of Oleron.

"And I beheld, and heard an angel flying through the midst of heaven,
saying with a loud voice, Woe, woe, woe, to the inhabiters of the
earth!

"And the fifth angel sounded, and I saw a star fall from heaven upon
the earth; and to him was given the key of the bottomless pit."

When I read my Bible for myself, having then my choice of passages, I
either selected that grand portion of Genesis wherein the light is
separated from the darkness, or the visions and the marvels of
Revelation. I was fascinated by its imaginative poetry, so splendid
and yet so terrible, which has, in my opinion, never been equalled in
any other book of mankind. . . . The beasts with seven heads, the
signs in the heavens, the sound of the last trumpet were well-known
terrors that haunted and enchanted my imagination.

In a book, a relic of my Huguenot ancestors, printed in the last
century, I had seen pictures of these things. It was a "History of the
Bible," and the weird pictures illustrating the visions of the Book of
Revelation, invariably, had dark backgrounds. My maternal grandmother
kept this precious book, which she had brought from the Island, under
lock and key in a cupboard in her room; and as it was still my habit
to go there at the sad hour of dusk, it was then that I usually asked
her to lend me the book, so that I might turn over its leaves as it
lay upon her lap. In the dim twilight until it was too dark to see, I
gazed at the multitude of winged angels who were flying rapidly under
the curtain of blackness which presaged the end of the world. The
heavens were darker than the earth, and in the midst of the great
cloud masses, there was visible the simple and terrifying triangle
that signified Jehovah.




                             CHAPTER XXV.



Egypt, the Egypt of antiquity, at a later time, exercised a mysterious
fascination over me. I recognized a picture of it immediately, without
hesitation and astonishment, in an illustrated magazine. I saluted as
old acquaintances two gods with hawk heads that were cut in profile
upon a stone and placed at each end of a strangely depicted Zodiac,
and although I saw the picture for the first time upon an overcast
day, there came to me, and of that I am sure, a sudden impression of
great heat given out by a pitiless sun.




                            CHAPTER XXVI.



During the winter following the departure of my brother, I passed many
of my leisure hours in his room painting the pictures in the "Voyage
to Polynesia" which he had given me. With great care I first colored
the flowers and the groups of birds. After that I painted the men.
When I came to color the two young Tahitian girls who were standing at
the edge of the sea (the illustrator had been inspired to depict them
as nymphs) I made them white, all white and pink like a pretty little
doll--I thought them very beautiful done so.

It was reserved for me to learn later than their color is different,
and their charms quite otherwise.

My ideas of beauty have changed a great deal since that time, and it
would have astonished me very much if I had then been told what faces
I was to find most charming in the strange course of my later life.
But almost all children are under the dominion of some fancy which
dies out when they become men and women.

The majority of people, during the period of their innocence and
youth, similarly admire the same type; sweet, regular features, and
the fresh pink and white tints. Only at a later time does their
estimate of what constitutes beauty vary, then it accords with the
culture of their spirit, and especially does it follow in the wake of
their developing intelligence.




                            CHAPTER XXVII.



I do not exactly remember at what period I started my museum which
absorbed so much of my time. Just above my Aunt Bertha's room there
was a tiny garret-chamber that I had taken possession of; the chief
charm of the place was the window that opened to the west, and
commanded a view of the ramparts and its old trees. The reddish spots
in the distance, that broke the uniform green of the meadows, were
herds of wandering oxen and cows. I had persuaded my mother to paper
this attic room, and she had covered its walls with a pinkish chamois
paper which is still there; she also put a what-not and some glass
cases there. In these latter I placed my butterflies which I looked
upon as rare specimens; I also arranged therein the birds'-nests that
I had found in the woods of Limoise; the shells I had gathered upon
the shores of the Island, and those others (brought from the colonies
at an early time by unknown ancestors) that I had found in the garret
at the bottom of old chests where they had lain for years and years,
given over to dust and darkness.

I spent many tranquil hours in this retreat contemplating the tropical
mother-of-pearl shells, and trying to image to myself the strange
coasts from which they had come.

A good old great uncle of mine, who was very fond of me, encouraged me
in these diversions. He was a physician, and in his youth he had lived
for a long time upon the coast of Africa; he had a collection of
natural history specimens almost as valuable and varied as any found
in a city museum. His wonderful things captivated me: the rare and
exquisite shells, amulets and wooden weapons that still retained their
exotic odor, with which I became so surfeited later, and indescribably
beautiful butterflies under glass enchanted me.

He lived in our neighborhood and I visited him often. To get to his
cabinets, it was necessary to go through his garden where thorn-apples
and cacti grew abundantly, and where they kept a gray parrot, brought
from Gaboon, whose vocabulary consisted of words learnt from the
negroes.

And when my old uncle spoke of Senegal, of Goree, and of Guinea, the
music of these names intoxicated me, and conveyed to me vaguely
something of the sad languor of the dark continent. My uncle predicted
that I would become a great naturalist,--but he was as mistaken as
were all those others who foretold my future; indeed he struck farther
from the centre than any one else; he did not understand that my
liking for natural history was no more than a temporary and erratic
excursion of my unformed mind; he could not know that the cold glass
and the formal, rigid arrangements of dead science had not power to
hold me for long.




                           CHAPTER XXVIII.



In the meantime, alas! I had to spend many long and wearisome hours in
going through the form of studying my lessons.

Topffer, who is the only real poet of school-boys, that genus so
misunderstood, divides us into three groups: first, those who are in
boarding schools; second, those who do all their studying at home at a
window which overlooks a gloomy courtyard containing a twisted old fig
tree; third, those who also study at home in a bright little room
whose window commands a view of the street.

I belonged to that third class whom Topffer considers extraordinarily
privileged, and as likely, in consequence, to grow up into happy men.
My room was upon the first floor, and it opened into the street; it
had white curtains, and its green paper was embellished with bouquets
of white roses. Near the window was my work desk, and above it, upon a
book-shelf, was my very much neglected library.

In fine weather I always opened this window, but I kept my venetian
blinds half-closed, so that I might look out without having my
idleness seen, and reported by a meddlesome neighbor. Morning and
evening I glanced to the end of the quiet street that stretched its
sunny length between the white country houses and lost itself among
the old trees growing beyond the ramparts. I could see from there the
occasional passers-by, all well known to me, the neighborhood cats
that prowled within doorways or upon house-tops, the swifts darting
about in the warm air, and the swallows skimming along the dusty
street. . . . Oh! how many hours have I spent at that window feeling
like a caged sparrow, my spirit filled with vague reverie; and
meantime my ink-blotted copy-book lay open before me, but no
inspiration would come, and the composition that I was engaged upon
got itself finished very laboriously,--often not at all.

And before long I began to play tricks upon the pedestrians, a fatal
result of my idleness over which I often felt remorseful.

I am bound to confess that my great friend Lucette was usually a
willing assistant in these pranks. Although now almost a young lady
sixteen or seventeen years of age, she was at times almost as much of
a child as I. "You must never tell any one!" she would say with an
irrepressible smile of mischief in her merry eyes (but I may tell now
after so many years have passed, now that the flowers of twenty
summers have bloomed upon her grave).

Our pranks consisted of taking cherry stems, plum stones and any sort
of trash, and wrapping them neatly into white or pink paper parcels
that looked very attractive to the eye; we then threw these bundles
into the street and hid ourselves behind the shutters to see who
picked them up.

Sometimes we would write letters, impertinent or incoherent ones, with
accompanying drawings to illustrate the text; these we addressed to
the different eccentric people in our neighborhood, and, with the aid
of a thread, we lowered them to the sidewalk at about the same time
these persons were in the habit of passing. . . .

Oh! how merrily we laughed as we composed these hodge-podges of style!
With no one else have I ever laughed so heartily as with Lucette,--and
we usually roared over things that no one except ourselves could
possibly have considered funny. Over and above the bond of little
brother and grown sister there was between us a sympathy springing
from our appreciation of the ridiculous, and our notions of what
constituted fun were in complete accord. She was the sprightliest
person I ever knew, and sometimes a single word would start us to
laughing at our own or our neighbors' expense, until our sides ached
and we almost fell upon the floor.

This part of my nature was not, I must confess, in harmony with the
gloomy reveries evoked by the pictures of the Book of Revelation, and
with my ascetic religious convictions. But I was already full of
strange contradictions.

Poor little Lucette or Lucon (Lucon was the masculine for Lucette, and
I used to call her "My dear Lucon"); poor little Lucette was also one
of my professors, but one who caused me neither fear nor disgust. Like
"Mr. Ratin" she also kept a book wherein she would inscribe "good" or
"very good," and I showed it to my parents every evening. Until now I
have neglected to say that it had been one of her amusements to teach
me to play upon the piano; she taught me by stealth so that I might
surprise my parents by playing for them, upon the occasion of a family
celebration, the "Little Swiss Boy" or the "Rocks of St. Malo." The
result was she had been requested to go on with lessons that had had
such a favorable beginning, and my musical education was entrusted to
her until it came time for me to play the music of Chopin and Liszt.

Painting and music were the only things I worked at industriously and
faithfully.

My sister taught me painting; I do not, however, remember when I
commenced it, but it must have been very early in my life; it seems to
me that there was never a time when I was not able, with my pencil or
my brush, to express in some measure the odd fancies of my
imaginations.




                            CHAPTER XXIX.



In my grandmother's room, at the bottom of the cupboard where she kept
"The History of the Bible," with the terrible pictures illustrating
the visions of Revelation, she had also several other precious relics.
In particular there was an old silver-clasped psalm book. It was
extremely tiny, like a toy-book, and in its day it must have been a
marvel of the printer's skill. It had been made in miniature thus they
told me, so that it could be easily hidden; at the time of the
persecutions our ancestors had often carried it about with them,
concealed in their clothing. There was also, in a paste-board box, a
bundle of letters written on parchment and marked Leyden or Amsterdam.
Those written between the years 1702 and 1710 were secured by a large
wax seal stamped with a count's coronet.

They were letters of our Huguenot ancestors, who, at the revocation of
the Edict of Nantes, had quitted their country, their home and their
dear ones, rather than abjure their faith. The letters had been
written to an old grandfather, a man too aged to go the way of the
exile, who was able, for some inexplicable reason, to remain
unmolested in his retreat upon the Island of Oleron. The letters
testified to the fact that the exiles had been submissive and
respectful towards him to a degree unknown in our day; the wanderers
wrote asking his advice or his consent before undertaking anything,--
they even asked whether they might wear a certain wig which was
fashionable in Amsterdam at that time. They spoke of their troubles,
but without murmuring over them, with a truly Christian resignation;
their goods had been confiscated; they were obliged to follow
uncongenial trades in order to maintain themselves; and they hoped,
they said, with the aid of God always to make enough to keep their
children from starving.

Together with the respect that these letters inspired, they had also
the charm of age; it was a novel experience to enter into the life of
a bygone time, to know the inmost thoughts of those who had lived a
century and a half before me. And as I read them I was filled with
indignation against the Roman Church and Papal Rome, sovereign during
the many past centuries.--Surely it was she who was designated, in my
opinion at any rate, in that wonderful prophecy contained in
Revelation: "And the beast is a City, and its seven heads are Seven
Hills on which the woman sitteth."

My grandmother, always so austere and upright looking in her black
clothes, a type of a Huguenot woman, had been fearful for her own
safety during the Restoration, and although she never spoke of it, we
felt that she must have very depressing memories of that time.

And upon the Island, in the shade of a bit of woodland that was
encircled by a wall, I had seen the place where slept those of my
ancestors who had been excluded from the cemeteries because they had
died in the Protestant faith.

How could I be anything but faithful with such a past? And it is
certain that had the Inquisition been revived in my childhood, I would
have suffered martyrdom joyfully, like one filled to overflowing with
the spirit of God.

My faith was a faith that kept watch upon the theological errors of
the time, and I did not know the resignation felt by my ancestors; in
spite of my distaste for reading I often plunged into books of
religious controversy; I knew by heart the many passages from the
Fathers and the decisions of the first councils; I could have
discussed the dogmas of the church like a doctor of divinity, and I
considered my arguments against the papacy very shrewd.

But notwithstanding my fervor a distaste for all of these religious
things would often take possession of me; sometimes at church
especially where the gray light fell upon me and chilled me I felt it
most. The awful tediousness of some of the Sunday sermons; the
emptiness of the prayers, written in advance and spoken with
conventional unctuous voice, and gestures to suit; and the apathy of
the people who, dressed out in their best, came to listen,--how early
I divined its hollowness,--and how deep was my disappointment, and how
cruel the disillusionment--oh! the disheartening formalism of it all!
The very appearance of the church disconcerted me: it was a new
cityfied one, meant to be pretty without, however, meaning to be too
much so; I especially recall certain little efforts at wall decoration
which I held in the greatest abomination, and shuddered when I looked
at. It was that disgust in little which I experienced in so great a
degree when later I attended those Paris churches that strive so for
elegance, where one is met at the door by ushers whose shoulders are
tricked out with knots of ribbon. . . . Oh! for the congregation of
Cevennes! Oh! for the preachers of the wilderness!

Such little things as I have mentioned did not shake my faith which
seemed as solid as a house built upon a rock; but doubtless they made
the first imperceptible crevice through which, drop by drop, oozed the
melting ice-cold water.

Where I still knew true meditation, and felt the deep sweet peace one
should feel in the house of God was in an old church in the village of
St. Pierre Oleron; my great grandfather Samuel had, at the time of the
persecutions, worshipped and prayed there, and my mother had also
attended it during her girlhood days. . . . I also loved those little
country churches to which we sometimes went on Sunday in the summer
time: they were generally old and had simple whitewashed walls. They
were built any where and every where, in a corner of a wheat field
with wild flowers growing all about them; or in more retired places,
in the centre of some enclosure at the far end of an avenue of old
trees. The Catholics have nothing, in my opinion, which surpasses in
religious charm these humble little sanctuaries of our Protestant
ancestors--not even do their most exquisite stone chapels hidden away
in the depth of the Breton woods, that at a later time I learned to
admire so much, touch me so deeply.

I still held fast to my determination to become a minister; it still
seemed to me that that was my duty. I had pledged myself, in my
prayers I had given my word to God. How could I therefore break my
vow?

But when my young mind busied itself with thoughts of the future, more
and more veiled from me by an impenetrable darkness, my preference was
for a church which should be a little isolated from the noisy world,
for one where the faith of my congregation should ever remain simple,
for one receiving its consecration from a long past of prayers and
sincerest worship.

It would be in the Island of Oleron perhaps!

Yes; there, surrounded upon every side by the memories of my Huguenot
ancestors, I could look forward without dread, indeed with much
contentment, to a life dedicated to the service of the Lord.




                             CHAPTER XXX.



My brother had arrived at the Delightful Island. His first letter
dated from there was a very long one, it was written on thin paper
that had been stained a light yellow by the sea, for it had been upon
its way four months.

It was a great event in our family, and I still recall that as my
father and mother broke its seal, I sprang joyously up the stairs, two
steps at a time, in my haste to reach the second floor and call my
grandmother and aunts from their rooms.

Inside the plump-feeling envelope, which was covered over with South
American stamps, there was a note for me, and enclosed in this I found
a pressed flower, a sort of five-petalled star which, though somewhat
faded, was still pink. The flower, my brother wrote, was from a shrub
that had taken root and blossomed beside his window, almost within his
Tahitian hut, which was actually invaded by the luxuriant vegetation
of the region. Oh! with what deep emotion;--with what avidity, if I
may express it thus, did I gaze at and touch the periwinkle which was
almost a fresh and living part of that unknown and distant land, of
that voluptuous nature.

Then I pressed it again with so much care that I possess it intact to
this day.

And after many years, when I made a pilgrimage to the humble dwelling
in which my brother lived during his stay in Tahiti, I saw that the
shady garden surrounding it was rosy with these periwinkles; they had
even pushed their way over the threshold of the door to blossom within
the deserted cabin.




                            CHAPTER XXXI.



After my ninth birthday my parents, for a time, spoke of putting me
into boarding-school, so that I might become habituated to the harder
ways of life, and since the matter was talked over by all the members
of the family, I went about for several days feeling as if I were on
the eve of being sent to prison, for I imagined that a boarding-school
had high walls and windows guarded by iron bars.

But, upon reflection, they considered that I was too frail and
delicate a human plant to be thrown in contact with those others of my
kind who, in all probability, would play roughly, and have bad
manners; they concluded, therefore, to keep me at home a little
longer.

At any rate I was delivered from "Mr. Ratin." The old professor,
rotund of figure and kind of manner, who succeeded him, was less
distasteful to me, but I made just as little progress under his care.
In the afternoon, at about the time for his arrival, I would hastily
begin to prepare my lessons. I was then usually to be found at my
window, hidden behind the venetian blinds, with my book open at the
page containing the lesson; and when I saw him come into view at the
turning near the bottom of the street I commenced to study it.

And generally by the time he arrived I knew enough to receive, if not
to merit, a "pretty good," a mark over which I did not grumble.

I had also my English professor who came to me every morning,--and
whom I nicknamed Aristogiton (I do not now recall why). Following the
Robertson method, he had me paraphrase the history of Sultan Mahmoud.
Outside of that, the only thing that I am sure of is that I
accomplished nothing, absolutely nothing, less than nothing; but he
had the good taste not to growl at me, and in consequence I have an
almost affectionate remembrance of him.

During the extreme heat of the summer days it was my custom to study
in the yard; I took my ink-stained copy and lesson books and spread
them upon a table that stood in the summer house made shady by the
vines and honeysuckles that grew over it. And when I was nicely
settled there I felt that I might idle to my heart's content. From
behind the lattice-work, green with trellised vines, I kept a lookout
in order to see any danger that threatened in the distance. . . . I
was always careful to bring with me to this retreat a quantity of
cherries and grapes, whichever happened to be in season, and truly I
could have passed there hours of the most delicious reverie but for
the remorse that tormented me almost every moment, a remorse born of
the fact that I was not busying myself with my lessons.

Through the foliage I saw, close to me, the cool-looking pond with its
tiny grottoes which, since my brother's departure, I almost
worshipped. The little fountain in the centre stirred the waters and
made the sunlight that fell on its surface dance joyously; and the
sun's rays pierced the green verdure surrounding me--I seemed to be in
the midst of luminous water that quivered all about me with a
ceaseless motion.

My arbor was a shady little retreat that gave me a complete illusion
of country; from the far side of the old wall came the song of the
tropical birds belonging to Antoinette's mother, and I heard the
rollicking warble and twitter of the swallows perched on the house-
top, and the chirp of the common sparrows as they flew about among the
trees in the garden.

Sometimes I would throw myself face-upward full length upon the green
bench that was there, and through the tasselled honeysuckle I had a
view of the white clouds as they sailed across the blue of the sky.
There, too, I was initiated into the habits of the mosquitos who all
day long poised themselves tremblingly, by means of their long legs,
upon the leaves. And often I concentrated all my attention upon the
old wall where the insects acted out their tragical drama: the cunning
spider would come suddenly from his nook and ensnare in his web the
heedless little insects,--with the aid of a straw, I was usually able
to deliver them from their peril.

I have forgotten to mention that I had, for companion, an old cat
called Suprematie, who had been my faithful and beloved friend since
infancy.

Suprematie knew at what hour he would find me there, and he used to
slip in quietly upon the tips of his velvet paws; he never stretched
himself beside me without first looking at me questioningly.

The poor creature was very homely; he was marked queerly upon only one
side of his body; moreover, in a cruel accident he had twisted his
tail, and it hung down at a right angle. He was the subject of
Lucette's continual mockery, for she had a lovely Angora cat that had
usurped Suprematie's place in her affections. It was my habit to run
out to see her when she came to inquire after the members of my
family; she rarely failed to add, with a funny air of concern, which
made me burst out laughing in spite of myself: "And your horror of a
cat, is he in good health, my dear?"




                            CHAPTER XXXII.



During all this time my museum made great progress, and it soon became
necessary for me to have some new shelves put up.

My great uncle continued to take a very deep interest in my taste for
natural history, and among his shells he found a number of duplicates,
and these he presented to me. With indefatigable patience he taught me
the scientific classifications of Cuvier, Linne, Lamarck or
Bruguieres, and I was astonished at the attention with which I
listened to him.

In a very old little desk, that was a part of the furniture of my
museum, I had a copy-book into which I copied, from uncle's notes, and
numbered with the greatest care, the name of the species, genus,
family and class of each shell,--also the place of its origin. And
there by the dim light that fell upon the desk, in the silence of that
little retreat so high above the street, surrounded with objects what
had come from distant corners of the earth and from the depths of the
sea, when my mind wandered, and I became fatigued because of the
mysterious differences in the forms of animals, and because of the
infinite variety of shells, with what emotion I wrote down in my book,
opposite the name of a Spirifer or a Terebratula, such enchanting
words as these: "Eastern coast of Africa," "coast of Guinea," "Indian
Ocean."

I recall that in this same museum I experienced, one afternoon in
March, a peculiar feeling indicative of my tendency towards reaction,
that later, at certain periods of self-abandonment, caused me to seek
the rough and uncouth society of sailors, and made me revel in noise
and change and gayety.

It was Mardi-Gras time. At sundown I had gone out with my father to
see the masqueraders who were in the streets; and having returned
rather early I went immediately to my attic-room to classify some
shells. But the noise of the revellers and the clashing of their
tambourines reached even to the retreat where I was occupying myself
with scientific matters, and the sounds awakened in me a feeling of
inexpressible sadness. It was the same emotion, greatly intensified,
that I had when I listened, of winter evenings, to the old cake
vendor, and heard her voice die away into those far-off squalid
streets near the harbor. I experienced an unexpected anguish very
difficult to define in words. I had a vague impression, which was the
cause of my suffering, that I was imprisoned; and for the moment, I
thought that my liking for dry classifications and nature study shut
me away from the little boys of every age who were in the streets
below mingling with the sailors, more childish than they, who tricked
out in dreadful masks ran and frollicked and sang coarse songs. It
goes without saying that I had no desire to be one of them; the very
idea of jostling against them filled me with distaste, and I disdained
their rude sport. And I sincerely felt that it was better for me to be
where I was, occupied with putting the many-colored family of the
Purpura and the twenty-three varieties of the Gastropoda in order.

But nevertheless the gay and merry people in the street troubled me
strangely. And, as was usual with me when I felt distressed, I went
down to look for my mother for the purpose of begging her to come up
to keep me company. Astonished at my request (for I scarcely ever
asked any one into my den), astonished especially by my anxious
manner, she said with an air of pleasantry that it was silly for a boy
of ten to be afraid to stay alone; but she consented to return with
me, and when there she seated herself close to me and occupied herself
with a piece of embroidery. Oh! how reassuring was her sweet and
darling presence! I returned to my task without concerning myself
further about the noise of the maskers, and as I worked I glanced up
now and again to look at her beautiful profile cut in silhouette,
because of the darkness without, upon my tiny window pane.




                           CHAPTER XXXIII.



I am surprised that I cannot recall whether my desire to become a
minister transformed itself into a wish to lead the more militant life
of missionary, by a slow process or suddenly.

It seems to me that the change must have come at a very early period.
For a long time I had taken an interest in Protestant missions,
especially in those established in Southern Africa, among the
Bassoutos. During my childhood we subscribed for the "Messenger," a
monthly journal that had for frontispiece an interesting picture
which, very early in my life, made a forcible impression upon me.

This picture held a higher place in my regard than those of which I
have already spoken, but by no means because of its execution, its
color or background. It represented an impossible pine tree growing at
the edge of a sea, behind which a resplendent sun was setting, and, at
the foot of the tree, there was a young savage who was watching the
approach of a ship, from a distant point upon the horizon, that was
bringing to him the glad tidings of Salvation.

Early in my life, when from the warm depths of my soft and downy nest,
I looked out upon a yet formless world, that picture evoked many
dreams; later when I was more capable of appreciating the extreme
crudity of the design, that huge sun, half-engulfed in the sea, and
that tiny mission boat sailing towards the unknown shores still had a
very great charm for me.

Now when they questioned me I replied: "I expect to be a missionary."
But I spoke in a low voice, in the voice of one not sure of himself,
and I felt that they no longer believed in my asseverations. Even my
mother, when she heard my response, smiled sadly.

Doubtless my answer exceeded what she expected from my faith;--
probably she said to herself that it was never to be; no doubt she
thought that I would become something very different, in all
probability something less desirable, that it was impossible at this
time to foresee.

This determination of mine to become a missionary seemed to solve my
every problem. It would mean long voyages and an adventurous, perilous
life,--but journeys would be undertaken in the service of the Lord,
and the dangers endured for His blessed cause. That solution brought
me great tranquillity for a long time.

After having thus won peace for my religious conscience, I feared to
dwell upon the thought lest it should disclose some unexpected
weaknesses. But still the chill waters of commonplace sermons, with
their endless repetitions and stock phrases, continued to flow over
and wash away my early faith. My shrinking from life increased rather
than diminished. There seemed to hang between me and the years to come
a great curtain whose heavy folds it was impossible for me to lift.




                            CHAPTER XXXIV.



In preceding chapters I have not said much about that Limoise which
was the scene of my initiation into nature and its wonders. My entire
childhood is intimately connected with that little corner of the
world, with its ancient forests of oak trees, and its rocky moorlands
covered here and there with a carpet of wild thyme and heather.

For ten or twelve glorious summers I went there to spend my Thursday
holidays, and I dreamed of it during the dreary intervening days of
study.

In May our friends the D-----s and Lucette went to their country home
and remained until vintage time, usually until after the first October
frost,--and regularly every Wednesday evening I was taken there.

Nothing in my estimation was so delightful as that journey to Limoise.
We scarcely ever went in a carriage, for it was not more than three
and a half miles distant; to me, however, it seemed very far, almost
lost in the woods. It lay toward the south, in the direction of those
distant, sunny lands I loved to think of. (I would have found it less
charming had it been towards the north.)

Every Wednesday evening, at sunset, the hour therefore varying with
the month, I left home accompanied by Lucette's elder brother, a grown
boy of eighteen or twenty, who seemed to me a man of mature age. As
far as I was able I tried to keep pace with him, and, in consequence,
I was obliged to go more rapidly than when I walked with my father and
sister; we went through the quiet streets lying near the ramparts, and
passed the sailors' old barracks, the sounds of whose bugles and drums
reached as far as my attic museum when the south wind blew; then we
passed through the fortifications by the most ancient of its gray
gates,--a gate almost abandoned, and used now principally by peasants
with flocks of sheep and droves of cattle,--and finally we arrived at
the road that led to the river.

A mile and a half of straight road stretched before us, and this path
lay between stunted old trees yellow with lichens whose branches were
blown to the left by the force of the sea-winds that almost constantly
came from the west, sweeping over the broad and level meadows that lay
between us and the ocean.

To those who have a conventionalized idea of country beauty, and to
whom a charming landscape means a river winding its way between
poplars, or a mountain crowned by an old castle, this level road would
look very ugly.

But I found it exquisite in spite of its straight lines. Upon the left
there was nothing to be seen but grassy meadow land over which herds
of cattle strayed. And before us, in the distance, something that
resembled a line of ramparts shut in the plains sadly: it was the edge
of a rocky plateau at whose base flowed the river. The far bank of
this river was higher than the side that we were on, and was, in some
respects, of a different character, but for the most part it was as
flat and monotonous. And it is just this sameness that has so much
charm for me, an attraction appreciated seemingly by few others. The
great level plains with their calm and tranquil straight lines are
deeply and profoundly inspiring.

There is nothing in our vicinity that I love any better than the old
road; perhaps I have an affection for it because during my school-boy
days I built so many castles-in-Spain upon those flat plains where,
from time to time, I find them again. It is one of the few spots that
has not been disfigured by factories, docks and railways. It seems a
spot that belongs peculiarly to me, and certainly no one has the power
to contest my spiritual right to it.

The sum of the charm of the sensuous world dwells in us, is an
emanation from ourselves; it is we who diffuse it, each person for
himself according to his power, and we have it back again in the
measure of our out-giving. But I did not comprehend early enough the
deep meaning of this well-known truth. . . . During my childhood and
youth the charm seemed to reside in the thing itself, to have its
habitation in the old walls and the honeysuckle of my garden; I
thought it lay along the sandy shores of the Island and upon the
grassy meadows and rocky moorland about me. Later on, in pouring out
my admiration every where, as I did, I drew too heavily upon the well-
spring--I exhausted it at the source. And, alas! I find the land of my
childhood, to which I will no doubt return to die, changed and
shrunken, and only for a moment, in certain spots, am I able to
recreate the illusions I have lost;--there I am for the most part
weighed down by the crushing memories of bygone days. . . .

As I was saying before my digression, every Wednesday evening I walked
with a light and joyous step along the road that led towards those
distant rocks lying at the boundary of the plains, I went gayly
towards that region of oak trees and mossy stones in which Limoise was
situated,--my imagination greatly magnified it in those days.

The river we had to cross was at the end of the straight avenue of
lichened trees so harried by the west winds. The river was very
changeable, being subject to the tides and to all the moods of the
neighboring ocean. We crossed in a ferry-boat or a yawl, always having
for our oarsmen old sailors with bleached beards and sunburnt faces
whom we had known from earliest childhood.

When we reached the other bank, the rocky one, I always had a curious
optical illusion: it seemed to me that the town from which we had
come, and whose gray ramparts we still could see, suddenly drew very
far away from us, for in my young head distances exaggerated
themselves strangely. Upon this side all was different, the soil, the
grass, the wild flowers and even the butterflies that hovered over
them; nothing here was like those approaches to our town in whose fens
and meadows I took my daily walk. And the differences, which perhaps
others would not have noticed, thrilled and charmed me, for it had
been my habit to spend, perhaps to waste, my time in observing the
infinitesimally small things in nature, and I had often lost myself in
contemplation of the lowliest mosses. Even the twilights of these
Wednesday evenings had about them something distinctive and peculiar
which I cannot express; generally we reached the far shore just as the
sun was setting, and we watched it, from the height of the lonely
plateau, disappear behind the tall meadow-grass through which we had
but newly come, and as it sunk its great ruddy dish seemed uncommonly
large.

After crossing the river we turned off the high-road and took an
unfrequented way that led through a region called "Chaumes," a very
beautiful place at that time but horribly profaned to-day.

"Chaumes" lay at the entrance of a village whose ancient church we saw
in the distance. As it was public property it had kept intact its
native wildness. This "Chaumes" was a sort of table-land composed of a
single stone, and this rock, which undulated slightly, was covered
with a carpet of short, dry fragrant plants that snapped under our
feet; and a whole world of tiny gayly-colored butterflies and tinier
moths fluttered among the rare and delicate flowers growing there.

Sometimes we passed a flock of sheep guarded by a shepherd much more
countrified looking and tanned than those seen in the meadows about
our town. Lonely and sun-scorched, Chaumes seemed to me the very
threshold of Limoise: it had its very odor, the mingled scent of wild
thyme and sweet marjoram.

At the end of the rocky moor was the hamlet of Frelin. I love this
name of Frelin, for I think of it as being derived from those large
and fierce hornets (frelons) that build their nests in the heart of a
certain species of oak tree found in the forests of Limoise; to get
rid of these pests it is necessary, in the springtime, to build great
fires around the infested trees. This hamlet was composed of three or
four cottages. They were all low, as is the custom of our country, and
they were old, very old and gray; above the little rounded doorways
were half-effaced ornamental Gothic scrolls and blazonments. I
scarcely ever saw them except at dusk, as twilight was falling, and
the hour and the quaint little houses themselves awoke in me an
appreciation of the mystery of their past; above all these humble
dwellings attested to the antiquity of this rocky ground, so much
older than the meadows of our town which had been won from the sea,
and where nothing that dates before the time to Louis XIV is to be
found.

As soon as we left Frelin I commenced to look eagerly along the path
ahead of me, for after that we usually spied Lucette, either afoot or
in a carriage, coming to meet us. As soon as I caught a glimpse of her
I would run ahead to embrace her.

On our way through the village we passed the tiny church, a wonder of
the twelfth century, built in the rarest and most ancient Romanesque
style;--and then as the shadows of evening deepened we saw, in the
semi-darkness before us, something that had the form of tall dark
legions: it was the forest of Limoise, composed almost wholly of
evergreen oaks, whose foliage is very dark and sombre. We then came
into the road leading directly to the house; on our way we passed the
well where the patient, thirsty cattle awaited their turn to drink.
And finally we opened the little old gate, and traversed the first
grassy courtyard which the shadowing trees, a century old, plunged
into almost total darkness.

The house lay between this courtyard and a large uncultivated garden
that extended to the edge of the oak forest. As we entered the ancient
dwelling, with its whitewashed walls and old-fashioned wainscoting, I
always looked eagerly for my butterfly-net that was usually to be
found hanging in the place where I had left it, ready for the next
day's chase.

After dinner it was our custom to go to the foot of the garden, and
there we sat in an arbor that was built against the old wall
encircling the yard,--this bower faced away from the unfriendly
darkness of the woods where the owls hooted. And while we were seated
in the beautiful, mild, star-bespangled night, suddenly upon the air,
musical with the chirping of myriad crickets, there was heard the
tolling of a bell,--heard very clearly by us although it came from
afar off,--it was the church bell in the village announcing the
evening service.

Oh! the vesper bell of Enchillais heard in that beautiful garden long
ago! Oh! the sound of that bell, a little cracked but still silvery,
like the once beautiful voices of very old people which still retain
something of their sweetness. What charm of past times, and half sad
meditations of peaceful death, were awakened by that music which
spread itself into the limpid darkness of the surrounding country! And
we heard the bell chiming for a long time, but its sound reached us
fitfully; one while it seemed to be near, and then again it seemed far
away, as it obeyed the will of the soft night wind that was stirring.
I bethought me of all those who, on their lonely farms, were listening
to it; I bethought me, too, of all the unpeopled places round about
where it would be heard by no one, and a shudder passed through me at
the thought of the near-by forest, where the sweet vibrations of the
bell would die.

The municipal council, composed of very superior spirits, after having
first put its everlasting tri-colored flag upon the steeple of the
little Roman Catholic Church, then suppressed its vesper bell. Its day
is done; and we shall never again, upon summer evenings, hear that
call to prayers.

Going to bed there was always a very enlivening proceeding, especially
when there was the prospect of a whole Thursday of play before me. I
would, I am sure, have been very much afraid in the guest chamber,
which was on the ground floor of the great, isolated house; but until
my twelfth year I slept on the floor above, in the spacious room
occupied by Lucette's mother;--with the aid of screens they had made
for me a little room of my own. In this retreat there was a book-case
with glass doors that belonged to the time of Louis XIV; this was
filled with treatises, a century old, upon navigation, and with
sailors' log-books that had not been opened for a hundred years. Tiny,
scarce visible butterflies, that entered by the open windows, were to
be found here all summer long, sleeping with extended wings upon the
whitewashed walls. And often the most exciting incident of the day
happened just as I was falling asleep; sometimes then an unwelcome bat
found his way into the room and circled wildly about the lighted
candles; or an enormous moth buzzed in and we would chase him with a
cobweb-broom. Or again a storm descended upon us and the great trees
lashed their branches against the house, and the old shutters slammed
back and forth, and we waked with a start.




                            CHAPTER XXXV.



Now comes the apparition of another little friend who stood very high
in my childish favor. As nearly as I can remember I became acquainted
with her when I was eleven; Antoinette had left the country; Veronica
was forgotten.

Her name was Jeanne, and she was the youngest member of a naval
officer's family, that like the D-----s had been bound up in
friendship with ours for more than a century. As she was two or three
years younger than I, I had at first taken but little notice of her--
probably I thought her too babyish.

Her face was as droll as a little kitten's, and it was impossible to
tell from the pinched up features whether she would become pretty or
ugly; but she had a certain grace, and when she was eight or nine
years old her face became very sweet and charming. She was very
roguish, and as friendly as I was diffident; and as she darted about
in those childish dances we sometimes had in the evenings, and from
which I held myself aloof, she seemed to me the extreme of worldly
elegance and coquetry.

But in spite of the great intimacy between our families, it was
evident that her parents looked upon our friendship with disfavor,
they probably thought it unseemly that she had chosen a boy for her
companion. This knowledge caused me much suffering, and the
impressions of my childhood were so vivid and persistent that I did
not, until many years had passed, until I became quite a grown youth,
pardon her father and mother the humiliation they had caused me.

It therefore resulted that my desire to play with her increased
greatly. And she, knowing this, was as perverse as a princess in a
fairy tale; she laughed mercilessly at my timid ways, at my awkward
manners and my ungraceful fashion of entering the parlor; there was
kept up between us a constant interchange of playful raillery, an oral
stream of inimitable pleasantry.

When I was invited to spend the day with her the prospect gave me the
greatest joy, but the aftertaste of the visit was generally bitter,
for usually I committed some mortifying blunder in that family where I
felt myself so misunderstood. Every time I wished to have Jeanne at my
house for dinner it was necessary for my aunt Bertha, who was a person
of authority in the eyes of Jeanne's parents, to arrange the matter
for me.

Upon one occasion when little Jeanne returned from Paris she related
to me the story of the "Donkey's Skin," which she had seen acted at
the theatre in the city.

Her time so spent was not lost, for the "Donkey's Skin" was destined
to occupy a prominent place in my life during the next four or five
years, the hours that I wasted upon it were more preciously squandered
than were any others in my life.

Together we conceived the idea of mounting the piece upon the stage of
my miniature theatre. That play of the "Donkey's Skin" brought us
together very often. And little by little the project assumed gigantic
proportions; it grew as the months sped, and amused us in ever
increasing measure; indeed, in proportion to the degree of perfection
to which we were able to bring our conception did we enjoy it. We
manufactured fantastic decorations; we dressed, so that they might
take part in the processions, innumerable little dolls. It will be
necessary for me to speak often of that fairy spectacle which was one
of the important things of my childhood.

And even after Jeanne tired of it I worked over it alone, and I fairly
outdid myself by undertaking enterprises that seemed grand to me,
such, for instance, as my efforts to represent moonlight, great
conflagrations and storms. I also made marvellous palaces and gardens
wonderful as Aladdin's. All my dreams of enchanted regions, of strange
tropical luxuries, which I later found in the distant corners of the
world, took form in the little play of the "Donkey's Skin." Leaving
out the mystical experiences at the commencement of my life, I can
affirm that almost all my fancies had their essay on that tiny stage.
I was nearly fifteen when the last decorations, unfinished ones, were
laid away forever in the cardboard box that served them for a peaceful
tomb.

And since I have anticipated their future I will say in conclusion
that in later years, when Jeanne had grown into a beautiful woman,
upon numerous occasions we have planned to open the box where our
little dolls are sleeping. But we live our life so rapidly that we
seem never to find the time, nor will we, I fear, ever find it.

Later our children may,--or who can tell, perhaps our grandchildren!
Upon some future day, when we are forgotten, our unknown descendants
in ferreting to the bottom of old cupboards will be astonished to find
there numberless little creatures, nymphs, fairies and genii, all
dressed by our hands.




                            CHAPTER XXXVI.



It is said that many children who live in the central provinces, away
from the ocean, have a great longing to see it. I who had never been
away from the monotonous country surrounding us looked forward eagerly
to seeing the mountains.

I tried to imagine them; I had seen pictures of several, and I had
even painted them for the "Donkey's Skin." My sister, when she visited
Lake Lucerne, sent me a description of the mountains, and wrote me
long letters about them, such as are seldom addressed to a child of my
age. And my ideas were further extended by some photographs of
glaciers that my sister brought me for my magic-lantern. I desired
with all my heart to see the mountains themselves.

One day, as if in answer to my wish, there came a letter that created
quite a stir in our house. It was from a first cousin of my father,
who had at one time regarded my father with a brotherly love, but for
thirty years, for some reason unknown to me, this cousin had not
written or given any sign of life.

At the time of my birth, all talk of him had ceased in our family, and
I was ignorant of his existence. And now he wrote and begged that the
old bond might be renewed; he was living, he said, in a little
southern village in the heart of the Swiss Mountains. He announced
that he had two sons and a daughter about the age of my brother and
sister. His letter was very affectionate, and my father responded to
it in like manner and told his cousin all about us, his three
children.

The correspondence having continued, it was arranged that I should
spend my next vacation with my relatives; my sister was to take me
there and play the part of mother as she had done during our visit to
the Island.

The south, the mountains, this sudden extension of my horizon, the
cousins who seemed literally to have fallen from the sky, became the
subject of my constant reveries until the month of August, the time
set for our departure.




                           CHAPTER XXXVII.




Little Jeanne had come over to spend the day at our house; it was at
the end of May during that spring in which my expectations were so
great--I was twelve years old at the time. All the afternoon we
rehearsed with our tiny jointed china dolls, and painted scenery, we
had in fact been busy with the "Donkey's Skin,"--but with a revised
and grand version of it, and we had about us a great confusion of
paints, brushes, pieces of cardboard, gilt paper and bits of gauze.
When it came time for us to go down into the dining-room we stored our
precious work away in a large box that was consecrated to it from that
day forth--the box was a new one made of pine, and it had a
penetrating, resinous odor.

After our dinner, at dusk, we were taken out for a walk. But, to my
surprise and sorrow, we found it chilly and the sky was overcast, and
every where there was a sort of mist that recalled winter to my mind.
Instead of going beyond the town, to the places usually frequented by
pedestrians, we went towards the Marine Garden, a much prettier and
more suitable walk, but one usually deserted after sunset.

We went down the long straight street without meeting any one; as we
drew near the "Chapel of the Orphans" we heard those within chanting a
psalm. When that was finished a procession of little girls filed out.
They were dressed in white, and they looked very cold in their spring
muslins. After making a circuit of the lonely quarter, chanting
meanwhile a melancholy hymn, they noiselessly re-entered the chapel.
There was no one in the street to see them save ourselves, and the
thought came to me that neither was there any one in the gray heavens
above to see them; the overcast sky seemed as lonely as the solitary
street. That little band of orphaned children intensified my feeling
of sorrow and added to the disenchantment of the May night, and I had
a consciousness of the vanity of prayer, of the emptiness of all
things.

In the Marine Garden my sadness increased. It was extremely cold, and
we shivered in our light spring wraps. There was not a single
promenader to be seen. The large chestnut trees all abloom and the
foliage, in the glory of its tender hue, formed a feathery green and
white avenue--emptiness was here too; all of this intertwined
magnificence of branch and flower, seen of no one, unfolded itself to
the indifferent sky that stretched above it cold and gray. And in the
long flower beds there was a profusion of roses, peonies and lilies
that seemed also to have mistaken the season, for they appeared to
shiver, as we did, in the chill twilight.

I have found that the melancholy one sometimes feels in the springtime
usually transcends that felt in autumn, for the reason, doubtless,
that the former is so out of harmony with the promise of the season.

The demoralized state into which I was thrown by everything about me
gave me a longing to play a boyish trick upon Jeanne. There came to me
a desire (one that I frequently felt) to have some sort of revenge
upon her, because her disposition was so much more mature and yet more
sprightly than mine. I induced her to lean over and smell the lovely
lilies, and while she was doing so I, by giving her head a very slight
push, buried her nose deep in the flowers and it became covered with
yellow pollen. She was indignant! And the thought that I had acted so
rudely tended to make the walk home a very painful one.

The beautiful evenings of May! Had I not cherished memories of those
of preceding years, or had they in truth been like this one? Like this
one in the cold and lonely garden? Had they ended so miserably as did
this play-day with Jeanne? With a feeling of mortal weariness I said
to myself: "And is this all!" an exclamation which soon afterwards
became one of my most frequent unspoken reflections, a phrase indeed
that I might well have taken for my motto.

When we returned I went to the wooden box to inspect our afternoon's
work, and as I did so I inhaled the balsamic odor that had impregnated
everything belonging to our theatre. For a long time after that, for a
year or two, perhaps longer, the odor of the pine box containing the
properties of the "Donkey's Skin" recalled vividly that May evening so
filled with poignant sorrow, which was one of the most singular
feelings of my childhood. Since I have come to man's estate I no
longer suffer from anguish that has no known cause, doubly hard to
endure because mysterious, I no longer feel as if my feet are treading
unfathomable depths in search of a firm bottom. I no longer suffer
without knowing why. No, such emotions belonged peculiarly to my
childhood, and this book could properly bear the title (a dangerous
one I well know): "A Journal of my extreme and inexplicable sorrows,
and some of the boyish pranks by which I diverted my mind from them."




                           CHAPTER XXXVIII.



It was about this time that I installed myself in my aunt Claire's
room for the purpose of study, and there too I busied myself
manufacturing wonders for the "Donkey's Skin." I took possession of
the place as entirely as an army occupies a conquered country--I would
not admit the possibility of being in the way.

My aunt Claire was the person who petted me most. And it was she who
was always so careful of my little things. She always looked after my
finery or anything uncommonly fragile, things that the least breath of
air would have blown away--such exquisitely delicate trifles, for
example, as the wings of a butterfly, or the bright scale of a beetle,
intended for the costumes of our nymphs and fairies--when I said to
her: "Will you please take care of this, dear auntie?" I felt that I
could be easy about it, for I knew that no one would be allowed to
touch it.

One of the great attractions in her room was a bear that was used for
holding burnt-almonds; and I often visited the place for the sole
purpose of paying my respects to this animal. He was made of china and
he sat upon his hind legs in the corner of the mantelpiece. According
to a compact that I had with my aunt, every time that his head was
turned to the side (and I found it so several times during a day) it
meant that there was an almond or some other kind of candy for me.
When I had eaten this I straightened his head to indicate that I had
been there, and then I departed.

Aunt Claire enjoyed helping us with the "Donkey's Skin"; she worked
enthusiastically over the costumes and each day I gave her some task.
She was especially skilful in devising hair for the fairies and
nymphs; she managed to fix upon their tiny heads, about as big as the
end of a little finger, blond wigs made of light silk thread, this
thread she twined upon the finest wires and thus she was able to twist
it into beautiful ringlets.

Then when it became absolutely necessary for me to study my lessons,
in the feverish haste of the last half hour that I reserved for my
task, after having wasted my time in idleness of every sort, it was
aunt Claire who came to my rescue; she would open the large dictionary
and hunt up for me the unfamiliar words in the exercises and lessons.
She also took up the study of Greek in order to assist me with my
lessons in that language. When I studied my Greek I always led my aunt
Claire to the stairway and I sprawled there upon the steps, my feet
higher than my head; for two or three years that was the classic pose
I took for the study of the Iliad, or Xenophon's Cyropedia.




                            CHAPTER XXXIX.



Thursday evening was a time of great rejoicing with me whenever a
terrible storm descended upon Limoise, and thus made it impossible for
me to return home that night.

It happened occasionally; and since I had had the experience, I used
to hope that it might occur often, and especially did I wish for a
storm when I had failed to prepare my lessons. One inhuman professor
had instituted Thursday tasks, and it was necessary for me to drag my
text and copy-books with me to Limoise; my beloved holidays, spent in
the sweet open air, were overcast by their dark shadow.

One evening at about eight o'clock the much desired storm broke upon
us with superb fury. Lucette and I were in the large drawing-room that
resounded with the noise of the thunder, and we felt none too safe
there. Its great wall-spaces were broken by only two or three old
engravings in ancient frames. Lucette, under her mother's direction,
was putting the finishing touches to a piece of needle work, and, on
the rather worn-out piano, I was playing, with the soft pedal down,
one of Rameau's dances; the old-fashioned music sounded exquisite to
me as it mingled with the noise of the great thunder claps.

When Lucette's work was completed, she turned over the leaves of my
copy-book lying on the table. After she had examined it she gave me a
meaning look, intended only for my eyes, that said as plainly as a
look can that she knew I had neglected my task. Suddenly she asked:
"where did you leave your Duruy's 'History'?"

My Duruy's "History"! Where indeed had I left it? It was a new book
with scarcely a blot in it. Great heavens! I had forgotten it and left
it out of doors at the far end of the garden in the most removed
asparagus bed. For my historical studies I had selected the asparagus
bed which was like a bit of copse, for the feathery green plants, past
their season, grew high and luxuriant; a hazel glen, leafy and
impenetrable, and as shady as a verdant grotto, was the spot I had
chosen for the more exacting and laborious work of Latin
versification. As this time I was scolded by Lucette's mother for my
great carelessness, we decided to go immediately and rescue the book.

We organized a search party, and at the head of it went a servant who
carried a stable-lantern; Lucette and I walked behind him. Our feet
were protected from the wet ground by wooden shoes, and with much
difficulty we held over us a large umbrella that the wind constantly
turned inside out.

Once outside I was no longer afraid; I opened my eyes wide and
listened with all my ears. Oh! how wonderful, and yet how sinister,
the end of the garden looked seen by those sudden and great flashes of
green light that shimmered and trembled about us from time to time,
and then left us blind in the blackness of the stormy night. And I
shall never forget the impression made upon me by the continual
crashing of the branches of the trees in the near-by oak forest.

We found Duruy's "History" in the asparagus bed all water soaked and
mud bespattered. Before the storm the snails, exhilarated no doubt by
the promise of rain, had crawled over the book and they had left their
slimy, glistening traces upon it.

Those small tracks remained on the book for a long time, preserved,
doubtless, by the paper cover that I put over them. They had the power
to recall a thousand things to me, thanks to that peculiarity of my
mind that associates the most dissimilar and incongruous images if
only once, for a single favorable moment, they have been accidentally
joined.

And therefore the little, shining, zig-zag marks on the cover of Duruy
always brought to my mind Rameau's gay dance that I played on the
shrill old piano, only to have it drowned by the noise of the raging
storm; and the same little blotches also recall to me a vision that I
had that night (one, no doubt, born of an engraving by Teniers that
hung on the wall); there seemed to pass before my eyes little people
belonging to a bygone age who danced in the shade of a wood like that
of Limoise; the apparition awakened in me an appreciation of the
pastoral gayety of that time, a conception of the abandon and
joyousness of the picnickers who were dancing so merrily under the
spreading branches of the oak trees.




                             CHAPTER XL.



And yet the return home from Limoise Thursday evenings would have had
a great charm but for the remorse I almost always felt because of
neglected duties.

My friends took me as far as the river in the carriage, or I rode on a
donkey, or we walked. Once past the stony plateau on the south bank of
the river, and once over it and upon the home side I found my father
and sister awaiting me; I walked gayly beside them in the straight
path lying between the extensive meadows that led to our house. I went
at a brisk pace in my eagerness to see mamma, my aunts and our dear
home.

When we entered the town, by the old disused gate, it was always dusk,
the dusk of a spring or summer night; as we passed the barracks we
heard the familiar drums and bugles sounding the hour for the sailors'
all-too-early bed.

And when we arrived at the house I usually spied my beloved ones
(clothed in their black dresses) seated in the honeysuckle arbor at
the end of the yard, or they were sitting out under the stars.

Or, if the others had gone in, I was sure to find aunt Bertha there
alone; she was a very independent person, and she dared defy even the
dew and evening chill. After kissing and embracing me she pretended to
smell of my clothes, and after sniffing a minute, to make me laugh,
she would say: "Ah! you smell of Limoise, my darling."

And indeed I did have something of the fragrance of Limoise about me.
When I came from there I was always impregnated with the odor of wild
thyme and the other aromatic plants peculiar to that part of the
country.




                             CHAPTER XLI.



Speaking of Limoise I will be vain enough to speak here of an act of
mine that I consider as brave as it was obedient, for it fell in with
a promise that I had given.

It happened a short time before my departure for the south, before
that journey to the mountains with which my imagination was ever busy;
it occurred in the month of July following my twelfth birthday.

One Wednesday, having started earlier than usual, so that I might
arrive at Limoise before nightfall, I begged those accompanying me to
go no farther than just beyond the town; I entreated them, for this
once, to allow me to make the journey alone as if I were a grown boy.

As I was being ferried across the river I compelled myself to take
from my pocket the white silk handkerchief that I had promised to wear
about my neck to protect it from the cool breezes on the water; the
old weather-beaten sailors were looking at me and I felt unspeakably
ashamed as I tied the muffler around my neck.

And at Chaumes, in that shadeless spot, a place always baked by the
sun, I fulfilled the pledge that had been exacted from me at my
departure. I opened a large sunshade!--oh! how my cheeks reddened and
how humiliated I felt when I was ridiculed by a little shepherd-boy
who, with head bared to the sun's rays, guarded his sheep. And my
agony increased when I arrived at the village and I saw four boys, who
had doubtless just come from school, look at me with astonishment. My
God! I felt as if I would faint. It was true courage which enabled me
to keep my promise at that moment.

As they passed they stared hard as if to mock me for being afraid of
the sun. One muttered something that had little enough meaning, but
which I regarded as a mortal insult: "It is the Marquis of Carabas!"
he said, and then all began to laugh heartily. But notwithstanding, I
continued on my way with my parasol still open. I did not flinch nor
answer them, but the blood surged to my cheeks and hummed in my ears.

In the time that followed there were many occasions when it was
necessary for me to pass upon my way without noticing the insults cast
at me by ignorant people; but I do not recall that their taunts caused
me any suffering. But my experience with the parasol! No, I am sure
that I have never accomplished any braver act that that.

But I am convinced that it is unnecessary for me to seek any other
cause for my aversion to umbrellas, an aversion that followed me into
mature age. And I attribute to handkerchiefs and such things, and to
the excessive care my family took to stop up every chink through which
air might reach me, my later habit, in line with my tendency to
reactions, of exposing my breast to the burning rays of the sun, of
exposing myself to every kind of wind and weather.




                            CHAPTER XLII.



With my head pressed against the glass in the door of the railway
coach that was going rapidly I continually asked my sister, who sat
opposite:

"Are we in the mountains yet?"

"Not yet," she would answer, still remembering the Alps vividly. "Not
yet, dear. Those are only high hills."

The August day was warm and radiantly bright. We were in an express
train going south, on our way to visit those cousins whom we had never
seen.

"Oh! but that one! See! See!" I exclaimed triumphantly, as my eyes
spied an elevation towering above others; it was one whose blue height
pierced the clear horizon.

She leaned forward.

"Ah!" she said, "that is a little more like a mountain, I must
confess,--but it isn't a very high one, only wait!"

At the hotel, where we were obliged to remain until the following day,
everything interested us. I remember that night came suddenly, a night
of splendor, as we leaned upon the railing of the balcony leading from
our rooms, watching the shadows gather about the blue mountains and
listening to the chirping of the crickets.

The next day, the third of our frequently interrupted journey, we
hired a funny little carriage to take us to the town, one much out of
the line of travel at that time, where our cousins lived.

For five hours we rode through passes and defiles--for me they were
enchanted hours. Not only was there the novelty of the mountains, but
everything here was unlike our home surroundings. The soil and the
rocks were a bright red instead of, as in our village, a dazzling
white because of the underlying chalk beds. And at home everything was
flat and low, it seemed as if nothing there dared lift itself above
the dead level and break the uniformity of the plains. Here the
dwellings, of reddish hue like the rocks, and built with old gabled
ends and ancient turrets, were perched high up on the hill; the
peasants were very tanned, and they spoke a language I did not
understand; I noticed particularly that the women walked with a free
movement of the hips, unknown to the peasants of our country, as they
strode along carrying upon their heads sheaves of grain and great
shining copper vessels. My whole being vibrated to the charm of the
unfamiliar beauty about me, and I was fascinated by the strange aspect
of nature.

Toward evening we reached the little town that marked the end of our
journey. It was situated on the bank of one of those southern rivers
that rush noisily over their shallow beds of white pebbles. The place
still retained its ancient arched gateway and high, pierced ramparts;
the prevailing color of the gothic houses lining its streets was
bright red.

A little perplexed and agitated our eyes sought for the cousins whose
faces were not even known to us through photographs; but since they
had been apprised of our coming they would, no doubt, be at the
station to meet us. Suddenly we saw approaching us a tall young man,
and he had upon his arm a young lady dressed in white muslin. Without
the least hesitation we exchanged glances of recognition: we had found
each other.

At their house, on the ground floor, our uncle and aunt welcomed us;
both of them in their old age preserved traces of a once-remarkable
beauty. They lived in an ancient house of the time of Louis XIII; it
was built in an angle, and was surrounded by those porches that are so
frequently seen in small, southern mountain towns.

When we entered we found ourselves in a vestibule flagged with pinkish
stones and ornamented with a large fountain of burnished copper. A
staircase of the same stones, as imposing as a castle staircase, with
a curious balustrade of wrought-iron, led to the old-fashioned
wainscoted bedrooms on the second floor. And these things evoked a
past very different from that I had brooded over upon the Island, at
St. Ongeoise, the only past with which I was at this time familiar.

After dinner we went out and sat together upon the bank of the noisy
river; we sat in a meadow overgrown with centauries and sweet
marjoram, recognizable in the darkness because of their penetrating
odor. It was a very still, warm evening and innumerable crickets
chirped in the grass. It seemed to me that I had never before seen so
many stars in the heavens. The difference in latitude was not so
great, but the sea air that tempers our winters also makes our summer
evenings hazy; in consequence we could see more stars here in this
southern country with its clear atmosphere, than at our home.

The majestic mountains surrounding us, from which I could not take my
eyes, looked like great blue silhouettes: the mountains, never seen
until now, gave me the feeling, so much longed for, of being in a
distant country, they gave me the assurance that one of the dreams of
my childhood had come true.

I spent several summers in this village, and I made myself enough at
home to learn the southern dialect spoken by the people there. Indeed
the two provinces I became best acquainted with in my childhood was
this southern one and that of St. Ongeoise, both of them lands of
sunshine.

Brittany, which so many take to be my native place, I did not see
until a later time, not until I was seventeen, and I did not learn to
love it until long after that,--doubtless that is why I loved it so
ardently. At first it oppressed me and induced a feeling of extreme
sadness; my brother Ives initiated me into its charm, a charm tinged
with melancholy, and it was he who persuaded me to explore its
thatched cottages and wooden chapels. And following this, the
influence that a young girl of Treguier exercised over my imagination,
when I was about twenty-seven, strengthened my love for Brittany, the
land of my adoption.




                            CHAPTER XLIII.



The day after my arrival at my uncle's I met some children named
Peyrals who became my playmates. According to the fashion of that part
of the country their baptismal names were spoken preceded by the
definite article. The two little girls respectively ten and twelve
years old were called "the Marciette" and "the Titi," and their
younger brother, still a little chap, who did not, therefore, figure
so largely in our plays, was called "the Medon."

As I was younger in my ways than most boys of twelve,--in spite of my
understanding of some things usually beyond the comprehension of
children,--we immediately became a congenial little band, and for
several summers we came together and enjoyed each other's
companionship.

The father of the little Peyrals owned all the forests and vineyards
upon the hillsides about us. We had the freedom of them, were
absolutely our own masters, and no one controlled or restrained us in
any way, no matter how absurd we were.

In that mountain village our relatives were so esteemed by the
peasants living around them, that it was perfectly proper for us to
wander any where and every where in search of adventures. We would
start out very early in the morning upon mysterious expeditions, or we
went to distant vineyards to have picnics or to chase butterflies that
we never caught. Sometimes a little peasant would enlist in our ranks
and follow submissively wherever we led. After the espionage to which
I had been accustomed I found this liberty a delicious change. An
altogether novel and independent life in the mountains; I might with
some show of reason call it a continuation of my solitude, for I was
the senior of these children who merely participated in my fantastic
plays: between us there were abysmal differences springing from the
quality of our minds and imaginations.

I was always the undisputed chief of the band; Titi, the only one who
ever revolted, was easily brought to terms; the children seemed to
wish to please me in everything, and that made it very easy for me to
manage them.

That was the first little band I led. Later, other ones, less easy to
cope with, came under my dominion; but I always preferred to have them
composed of persons younger than myself, younger in mental development
especially, and more simple in every way than I, so that they would
not interfere with my whims, nor laugh at my childishness.




                            CHAPTER XLIV.



The only task required of me during my vacation was that I should read
from Fenelon's Telemaque (my education, you see, was a little out of
date). My copy of the work was composed of several small volumes.
Strangely enough, it was not irksome to me. I could image to myself
distinctly the land of Greece with its white marble temples and its
bright sky, and I had a conception of pagan antiquity that was almost
as vivid (if not so correct) as Fenelon's: Calypso and her nymphs
enchanted me.

Every day, in order to read, I hid myself from the Peyrals, either in
my uncle's garden or in the garret of his house, my two favorite
hiding-places.

This garret, under the high Louis XIII roof, extended the full length
of the house. The shutters of the place were seldom opened, and there
was here, in consequence, almost perpetual twilight. The old things,
belonging to a bygone century, lying there under the dust and cobwebs
attracted me from the first day; and, little by little, the habit of
slipping up there with my Telemaque had grown upon me. I usually stole
up after the noon dinner, secure in the thought that no one would
dream of looking for me there. At this noon hour of hot and radiant
sunshine, the garret, by contrast, was almost as dark as night.
Noiselessly I would throw open a shutter of one of the dormer windows
and a flood of sunshine poured in; then I climbed out on the roof, and
with elbows resting upon the sun-warmed old slate tiles overgrown with
golden mosses, I would read my book.

Around me, on this same roof, thousands of Agen plums were drying.
This fruit, intended for winter use, was spread out on mats made of
reeds; warmed through and through by the sun and thoroughly dried they
were delicious; their fragrance, too, was exquisite and it impregnated
the whole garret. The bees and the wasps who, like me, ate them at
their pleasure, tumbled on their backs and extended their legs in the
air, overcome seemingly by the cloying sweetness of the fruit and the
heat of the day. And on the neighboring roofs, between the old gothic
gables, there were similar reed mats covered with these same plums,
all visited by myriads of buzzing wasps and bees.

One could also see from here the two streets that came together in
front of my uncle's house; they were lined with mediaeval dwellings,
and each terminated at an arched door that was cut in the high red
stone wall that had formerly served as a fortification. The village
was hot and drowsy and silent, the heat of the mid-summer sun made it
torpid; but one could hear innumerable chickens and ducks scratching
and pecking at the sun-baked dirt in the streets. And far away in the
distance the mountains pierced the cloudless blue of the heavens with
their sunny heights.

I read Telemaque in very small doses; two or three pages a day was
generally enough to satisfy my curiosity and to ease my conscience for
the day; that task over, I went down hurriedly to find my little
friends, and we would set out on a trip to the woods and vineyards.

My uncle's garden, my other place of retreat, was not attached to the
house, but was situated, as were all the other ones in the village,
beyond the ramparts of the town. It was surrounded by very high walls,
and one had entrance to it through an old arched gate that was
unlocked with an enormous key. Upon certain days, armed with my
Telemaque and my butterfly-net, I isolated myself there.

In the garden there were several plum trees, and from them there fell,
onto the warm earth, over-ripe plums of the same variety as those
drying on the ancient roofs. The old arbor was trellised with grape
vines, and legions of flies and bees feasted upon the musky, fragrant
grapes. The extreme end of the garden, for it was a very large one,
was overgrown like an ordinary field with alfalfa.

The charm of this old orchard lay in the feeling it gave one of being
greatly secluded, of being absolutely alone in a wilderness of space
and silence.

I must not forget to speak of the old arbor that two summers later was
the scene of the most momentous act of my childhood. It backed against
the surrounding wall, and its lattice-work was overspread with
muscadine vines that the sun scorched and withered.

In this garden, for some inexplicable reason, I had the impression of
being in the tropics, in the colonies of my fancy. And in truth the
tropical gardens that I saw later were filled with the same heavy
fragrance and had much the same appearance. From time to time rare
butterflies, such as are not often seen elsewhere, flitted through the
garden. From a front view they looked like common yellow and black
butterflies, but a side view showed them to be as glistening and as
beautiful a blue as the exotic ones from Guinea that I had seen under
glass in my uncle's museum. They were very wary and difficult to
ensnare, for they rested only for a second at a time upon the fragrant
muscadel grapes before fluttering away over the wall. Sometimes I
would place my foot in a crevice of the stone wall, and scramble up to
the top to look after them as they flew across the hot and silent
fields; and often I remained there on the coping for a long time,
propped upon my elbows, and contemplated the distant landscape. Every
where upon the horizon there were wooded mountains surrounded here and
there by the ruins of feudal castles. Before me, in the midst of
fields of corn and buckwheat, was the Bories estate. Its old arched
porch, the only one in the neighborhood that was whitewashed, looked
like one of those entry-ways that are so common in African villages.
This estate, I had been told, belonged to the St. Hermangarde
children, who were destined to become my future comrades. They were
expected almost daily, but I dreaded to have them come, for my little
band composed of the Peyrals seemed all sufficient and extremely well
chosen.




                             CHAPTER XLV.



Castelnau! This ancient name brings to me visions of glorious sunshine
and of clear light shining upon noble heights; it evokes the gentle
melancholy that I felt among its ruins, and recalls to me my dreams
before the dead splendors buried there for so many centuries.

The old ruin of Castelnau was perched on one of the most heavily
wooded mountains in the neighborhood, and its reddish stone turrets
and towers stood out boldly against the sky.

By looking over and beyond the wall surrounding my uncle's garden I
could see the ancient castle. Indeed, it was a conspicuous point in
the landscape, and one immediately saw its rough red stones emerging
from the interlaced trees; one instantly noted the ancient ruin
crowning the mountain all overgrown with the beautiful verdure of
chestnut and oak trees.

Upon the day of my arrival I had caught a glimpse of it, and I was
attracted by this old eagle's nest which must have been a superb place
of refuge during the stormy middle ages. It was a common custom in my
uncle's family to go up there two or three times a month to dine and
pass the afternoon with the proprietor, an old clergyman, who lived in
a comfortable house built against one side of the ruin.

For me those days were like a revel in fairy land.

We started very early in the morning so that we should be beyond the
plains before the hottest period of the day. When we arrived at the
foot of the mountain we were refreshed by the cool shade of the
forest, enveloped in its mantle of beautiful green. As we went up and
up, by zig-zag paths, afoot, and in single file, under lofty arching
oaks and intertwined foliage our line of march resembled a huge
serpent. I was reminded of Gustave Dore's engravings of mediaeval
pilgrims making their way to isolated abbeys perched on mountain
heights. Tiny springs oozed out here and there and trickled across the
red earth; between the trees we had momentary glimpses of beautiful
and extensive vistas. At last we reached the summit, and after passing
through the very quaint village that had perched on this height for
many centuries, we rang the bell at the priest's tiny door. The castle
overhung his miniature garden and house; both were built under the
shadow of the crumbling walls and the sinking, almost tottering, red
stone towers. A great peace seemed to emanate from those aerie ruins,
and a deep silence reigned there.

The dinners given by the old priest, to which several of the
notabilities of the neighborhood were invited, always lasted very
long. The ten or fifteen courses had an accompaniment of the ripest
fruits and the choicest wines of that country so excelling in
exquisite vintages.

For several hours we remained at the table afflicted by the August or
September midday heat, and I, the only child in the company, became
very restless; I was disturbed by the thought of the crushing nearness
of the castle, and after the second course I would ask to be permitted
to leave the table. An old serving-woman used always to go with me and
open the outer door in the wall of the feudal ramparts of Castelnau;
then she confided the keys of the stately ruin to me, and I plunged
alone, with a delicious feeling of fear, into the familiar path, and
passed through the gate of the drawbridge superposed on the ramparts.

There I might remain for an hour or two sure of not being disturbed; I
was at liberty to wander about in that labyrinth, and I was master in
the majestic but sad domain. Oh! the sweet memory of the reveries that
I have had there! . . . First I would make a tour about the terraces
overhanging the forest lying below; a panorama infinitely beautiful
unrolled itself to my sight; rivers winding here and there in the
distance looked like streams of silver; and, aided by the clear and
limpid summer atmosphere, I could see almost as far as the neighboring
provinces. A great calm pervaded this sequestered corner of France; no
line of railway penetrated it; and in consequence, it led a life
entirely apart from the big world, a life such as it had known in the
good old time.

After visiting the terraces I would go into the ruined interior, into
the courts, up the stairways and through the empty galleries. I
climbed to the old towers and put to flight flocks of pigeons, and
disturbed the sleep of bats and owls. On the first floor there was a
suite of spacious rooms, still roofed over, and very dark because of
the shuttered windows. I penetrated into these chambers, and I felt an
almost delicious terror when I heard my footsteps echoing through the
sepulchral stillness of the place. Then I would pass in review before
the strange Gothic paintings and the half-effaced frescoes that still
retained traces of gilt ornamentation; the fabled monsters and
garlands of impossible flowers had been added at the time of the
Renaissance. This magnificent, pictured past, fantastic and barbarous
to the point of being terrible, seemed to me, at that time, very vague
and dim and distant; I could not realize that it had been lighted up
by the same midday sunshine that warmed the red stones of the ruins
about me. And now that I am better able to estimate Castelnau, when I
recall it to my memory, after having seen most of the splendors of
this earth, I still think the enchanted castle of my childhood, as it
stands upon its glorious height, one of the most superb ruins of
mediaeval France.

In one of the towers there was a room whose ceiling was painted a
royal blue over-strewn with exquisite gold tracery and blazonry. In no
place have I realized feudalism so well as in that tower. There alone,
in the silence as of a city of the dead, I would lean out of the
little window cut in the thick wall and contemplate the green verdure
lying below me, and I tried to imagine that I saw coming along the
paths, given over to the flight of birds, a cavalcade of soldiers, or
a procession of noble knights and ladies. . . . And, for me, reared in
a level country, one of the greatest charms of the place was the view
I had of blue distances visible from every loophole and crevice, every
gap and opening in the rooms and towers of Castelnau, for then I
realized its extraordinary height.




                            CHAPTER XLVI.



My brother's letters, written close on very fine paper, continued to
reach us from time to time; he could only send them to us by sailing
vessels bound in our direction which lay-to in that part of the world
where he was stationed. Some of them were written particularly for me,
and these were long, and filled with never-to-be-forgotten
descriptions. I already knew several words of the sweet and liquid
language of Oceanica, and often in my dreams I saw the exquisite
island he described and roamed over it; it haunted my imagination as
does a chimerical realm, ardently desired, but as inaccessible as if
situated upon another planet.

During my visit to my cousins my father forwarded me a letter from my
brother addressed to me. I went up to the garret roof, on the side
where the plums were drying, to read it. He wrote of a place called
Fataua which was situated in a deep valley and surrounded by steep
mountains. "A perpetual twilight," he wrote, "reigns here under the
great exotic trees, and the spray of the cascade keeps the carpet of
rare ferns fresh." Yes; I could picture that scene to myself very
well, now that I had about me mountains and moist glens luxuriant with
ferns. . . . He described everything fully and vividly: my brother
could not know that his letters exercised a dangerous spell over the
child who, at his departure, appeared to be so tranquil and so
attached to the home fireside.

"The only pity," he wrote at the end, "is that this delightful island
has not a door opening into the home-yard, into the beautiful arbor
overgrown with honeysuckle, for instance, that lies behind the
grottoes and the little pond."

This idea of a door in the wall at the foot of our garden, and
especially the association between the little lake constructed by my
brother and distant Oceanica, struck me as very singular, and the
following night I had this dream:

I went into the yard and found it enveloped in a sort of deadly
twilight that gave me the impression that the sun had been
extinguished forever. Every where there seemed to be an inexpressible
desolation that is known only in dreams, and which it is almost
impossible to conceive of in the waking state. When I arrived at the
bottom of the garden near the beloved little lake, I felt myself
rising from the ground like a bird about to take flight. At first I
floated aimlessly as thistledown, then I passed over the wall and took
a south-west direction, the direction of Oceanica; I had no trace of
wings, and I lay on my back in an agony of dizziness and nausea as I
travelled with frightful rapidity, with the swiftness of a stone shot
from a sling. The stars whirled madly in space; beneath me oceans and
seas faded into the pallid and indistinguishable distance, and as I
journeyed I was ever enwrapped in that twilight bespeaking a dead
world. . . . After a few minutes I suddenly found myself encompassed
by the darkness of the noble trees in the valley of Fataua.

There in the valley my dream continued, for I ceased to believe in it,
--the utter impossibility of really being there impressed itself upon
my mind,--for very often I had been duped by such illusions which
always vanished when I awoke. My main concern was lest I should wake
wholly, for the vision, incomplete as it was, enchanted me. At least
the carpet of rare ferns was really there. As I groped in the night
air and plucked them I said to myself: "Surely these plants are real,
for I can touch them and I have them in my hand; surely they will not
disappear when the dream vanishes." And I grasped them with all my
strength to be sure of keeping them.

I awoke. A beautiful summer day had dawned, and in the village was
heard the noise of recommencing life. The continual clucking of the
hens as they roamed about in the streets, and the click-clack of the
weaver's loom caused me to realize where I was. My empty hand was
still shut tight, and the nails were pressed almost into the flesh,
the better to guard that imaginary bouquet of Fataua, composed of the
impalpable stuff of dreams.




                            CHAPTER XLVII.



I had very quickly attached myself to my grown cousins, and I felt as
well acquainted with them as if I had always known them. I believe it
is necessary that there should be the bond of blood for the creation
of those intimate relations between people, who but the day before
were almost ignorant of each other's existence. I also loved my uncle
and aunt; my aunt especially, who spoiled me a little, and who was so
good and still so beautiful in spite of her sixty years, her gray hair
and her grandmotherly way of dressing herself. In these levelling
days, wherein one person is so like another, people of my aunt's type
no longer exist. Born in the neighborhood, of a very ancient family,
she had never been away from this province of France, and her manners,
her hospitality, and her exquisite courtesy had a local stamp, every
detail of which pleased me greatly.

In direct contrast to my sheltered home life, here I lived almost
entirely out of doors. I roamed about in the streets and highways, and
often I went beyond the gates of the town. The narrow streets paved
with black pebbles like those in the Orient, and bordered with gothic
dwellings of the time of Louis XIII, had a singular charm for me. I
already knew all the nooks and corners, public highways and the byways
of the village, and I was well acquainted with many of the kind
country people who lived about us.

The women, peasant women with goitres, who passed my uncle's house on
their way to and from the surrounding fields and vineyards, carried
baskets of fruit on their heads, and they always paused to offer me
luscious grapes and delicious peaches. I was delighted with the
southern dialect, and with the songs of the mountaineers; and, best of
all, my unfamiliar surroundings ever reminded me that I was in a
strange country.

And now when I see any of the little things that I brought from there
for my museum, or when I look over the brief letters that I wrote to
my mother every day, I suddenly feel the warm sunshine, I experience
again the strange newness, I smell the fragrance of ripe southern
fruits, and I feel the keen freshness of the mountain air; and at such
times I realize that in spite of the long descriptions in these dead
pages they inadequately express all I felt.




                           CHAPTER XLVIII.



The little St. Hermangardes, of whom every one spoke so often, arrived
about the middle of September. Their castle was situated in the north
upon the bank of the Carreze, but they came every year to pass the
autumn in their very old and dilapidated mansion near my uncle's
house.

Two boys, both a little older than I, came this time, and contrary to
my expectation I took a fancy to them immediately. As they were in the
habit of spending a part of each year at their country place they had
guns and powder and often went hunting. Thus they brought an entirely
new element into our games. Their estate of Bories became one of the
centres of our operations. Everything there was at our disposal, the
servants and all the animals in the stables. One of our favorite
amusements was the construction of enormous balloons, nine or ten feet
high, and these we inflated by burning under them sheaves of hay; we
then watched them rise and sail away and away, until they were lost to
our sight high above the distant fields and woods.

The little St. Hermangardes were unlike other children; they had had
all their instruction from a tutor, and their ideas were different
from those one imbibes at boarding schools. When there was any
disagreement between us in regard to our games they always courteously
gave in to me, and therefore my contact with them did not help me to
meet the painful experiences of the future.

One day they came over and with much grace made me a present of a very
rare butterfly. It was of a pale yellow color, almost merging into
light green, the yellow of a very ordinary butterfly, but its front
wings were a shaded and exquisite pink, similar to the delicate rosy
tints sometimes seen at daybreak. They had captured it, they said, in
the late-ripening autumn grain fields of Bories,--they had caught hold
of it so deftly and carefully that their fingers had made no
impression upon its brilliant coloring. When, at about noontime, I
received it from them I was in the vestibule of my uncle's house, a
place always kept tightly closed during the hours of intense heat.
From the wing of the house I heard my cousin singing in the thin and
plaintive falsetto of a mountaineer; he often sang in that manner, and
when he did so his voice always gave me a feeling of unusual
melancholy as it broke the stillness of the late September noons. He
sang over and over the same old refrain: "Ah! Ah! The good, good
story. . . ." Here he always broke off and recommenced. And from that
moment Bories, the pinkish-yellow butterfly, and the sad little
refrain of the "good, good story" were inseparably associated in my
memory.

But I fear that I have said too much about the incoherent impressions
and images which came to me so frequently in days gone by; this is the
last time that I will speak at length of them. But it will be seen,
because of what follows, how important it is for me to note the
association existing between the dissimilar things mentioned above.




                            CHAPTER XLIX.



We left the mountains at the beginning of October, but my home-coming
was marked by a very painful circumstance--I was sent to school! I
went, of course, only as a day scholar; and it goes without saying
that I was never allowed to go and come alone lest I should get into
bad company. The four years that I spent at the university, as a day
scholar, were as strange and as full of odd experiences as any of my
life. But, notwithstanding, from that fatal day my history becomes
much less interesting as a narrative.

I was taken to school for the first time, at two o'clock in the
afternoon, upon one of those glorious October days, so sunny and
peaceful, that is like a reluctant and sad leave-taking of the summer-
time. Ah! how beautiful it had been in the mountains, in the leafless
forests and among the autumn-tinted vines!

With a crowd of children, all talking at the same time, I entered the
torture chamber. My first impression was one of astonished disgust
because of the hideousness of the ink-stained walls, and of the old
benches of shiny wood defaced by the penknife carvings of countless
school-boys who had been so inexpressibly miserable in this place.
Although I was a stranger to my new companions they treated me with
the greatest familiarity (they used thee and thou in addressing me)
and gave themselves patronizing airs that were almost impertinent.
Although I observed my school-mates timidly and furtively I thought
them, for the most part, exceedingly ill-mannered and untidy.

As I was twelve and a half I entered the third class; my tutor
considered me advanced enough to keep up with it if I chose to do so,
although I myself felt that I was scarcely equal to the task. The
first day, for the purpose of qualifying, we had to write Latin
exercises, and I remember that my father awaited, with some anxiety,
the outcome of the examination. When I told him I was second among
fifteen I was surprised that he attached so much importance to a
matter of so little interest to me. It was all one to me! Broken
hearted as I felt, how could I be affected by such a trifle?

Later, indeed, at no time, did I feel the impetus that the desire to
excel brings with it. To be at the foot of the class always seemed to
me the least of the ills that a school-boy is called upon to endure.

The weeks following my entrance were extremely painful to me. I felt
my intellect cramping rather than expanding under the multiplicity of
the lessons and the tasks imposed; even the realm of my young dreams
seemed closing against me little by little. The first dismal, foggy
weather, and the first gray days added a greater desolation and
sadness to my already overwrought feelings. The uncouth chimney-sweeps
had returned, and their yearly autumn cry was again heard in the
streets. Theirs was a cry that in my earlier years wrung my heart and
caused my tears to flow. When one is a child the approach of winter,
with its killing gloom and cold, seems to awake in him inexplicable
forebodings bespeaking the end of all bright and beautiful things;
time goes so slowly in childhood that we appear not to be able to
anticipate the inevitable reawakening that comes in the spring to all
things.

No, it is only when we are older, and would seem, therefore, to be
more impressionable to the changes of the seasons, that we regard
winter merely as an incident having its rightful place among the other
incidents of life.

I had a calendar and I marked off upon it the slowly passing days. At
the commencement of my first year of college life I was oppressed by
the thought of the months of study stretching before me, and by the
prospect of the interminable months that must come and go before we
reached the Easter vacation that was to give us a respite of eight or
ten days from the dreadful schoolroom grind and ennui; I seemed to
lose all my courage, and at times I was almost overwhelmed with
despair at the prospect of the long and dreary days that went so
slowly.

In the meantime cold weather, really cold weather set in and
aggravated my sorrows. Oh! the daily journey to school upon those
frigid December mornings, where for two deadly hours the only warmth
we obtained came from the inadequate coal fire, and before me the
torture of returning to my home in the face of the icy winter wind!
The other children frolicked and ran and pushed each other, and they
slid upon the ice when it chanced that the water in the gutters was
frozen over. As for me I did not know how to slide, and, besides,
sports such as the other boys indulged in, I considered highly
undignified. I was always escorted to and from school very sedately,
and I felt the humiliation of being conducted. I was sometimes laughed
at by my school-mates with whom I was not at all popular; and I had a
disdain for those who, like myself, were in bondage. I had scarcely an
idea in common with them.

Even Thursdays I had to give to the preparation of lessons that took
the entire day. The written tasks, absurd exercises, I scrawled off in
the most careless and illegible handwriting.

And my disgust for life was so great that I no longer took the least
bit of pains with myself; often now I was scolded for looking so
unkempt, and for having dirty, ink-stained hands. . . . But if I
continue in this strain I will succeed in making my recital as tedious
as were the school-days of my youth.




                              CHAPTER L.



Cakes! Cakes! My good hot cakes! The old cake woman had resumed her
nightly tour, and again we heard her rapid footsteps and her shrill
refrain. Always at the same hour, with the regularity of an automaton,
she went by our house. And the long winter recommenced in the same
manner as had the preceding ones, and as were similarly to begin the
following two or three years.

Our neighbors, the D-----s, accompanied by Lucette, always came at
eight o'clock Sunday evenings, and another neighbor visited us also
upon this same evening. These latter brought with them their little
daughter Marguerite, who gradually insinuated herself into my
affections.

That year Marguerite and I brought the Sunday winter evenings, over
which the thought of the tasks of the morrow brooded sadly, to a close
with an entirely new amusement. After the tea, when I felt that the
party was about to break up, I would hurry little Marguerite into the
dining-room, and there we rushed madly about the round table and tried
to catch or tag each other,--we played furiously. It goes without
saying that she was usually caught immediately and tagged very often,
and I scarcely ever; it therefore fell out that it was almost always
her turn to chase me, and she did it desperately. We struck the table
with our bodies, and yelled, and carried on our play with the greatest
imaginable uproar. We succeeded in turning up the rugs, in
disarranging the chairs, and in making havoc of everything. We soon
tired of our play, however,--the truth is I was too old to care
greatly for such frolics. I had scarcely any feeling save one of
melancholy in spite of the wild sport I indulged in, for over me
hovered the chilling thought that in the morning the usual round of
dry and laborious lessons would begin. My furious revel was simply a
way of prolonging that day of truce, of making it count to its very
last moment; it was an attempt to divert my thoughts by making plenty
of noise. It was also my way of hurling a defiance at those tasks that
I had left undone. My negligence troubled my conscience and disturbed
my sleep, and caused me finally to look over, hastily and feverishly,
by the feeble light of a candle, or by the cold gray light of early
dawn, the neglected lessons, before the coming of the despised hour in
which I betook myself to school.

There was always a little consternation in the parlor when the sounds
of our merriment reached those gathered there; it must have been
particularly distressing to our parents to hear that we were amusing
ourselves otherwise than with our duet sonatas, and to find that we
preferred noise and discord to the "Pretty Shepherdess."

And for at least two winters, at about half-past ten every Sunday
evening, we indulged in that romp around the dining-table. My school
was of little value to me, and the tasks imposed of even less benefit;
I always went to work reluctantly and in the wrong spirit, and that
lessened and extinguished my power and stupefied me. I had the same
unfortunate experience when I came in contact with school-mates of my
own age, my equals; their roughness disgusted me, and I repulsed all
the efforts they made to be friendly. . . . I never saw them except in
class, under the master's rod as it were; I had already become a
little being too peculiar and set in my ways to be modified greatly by
contact with them, and I therefore held aloof, and my eccentricities
accentuated themselves.

Almost all of them were older and more developed than I; they also
were more crafty and more sophisticated; in consequence there sprung
up amongst them a feeling of contempt and enmity for me that I repaid
with disdain, for I felt sure that they were incapable of
comprehending or following the flights of my imagination.

With the very youthful peasants in the mountains, and the fishermen's
children on the Island, I had never been haughty; we had understood
each other after the fashion of children who are primitive and
therefore fond of childish play; and upon such occasions I had
associated with them as if they were my equals. But I was arrogant in
my behavior to the boys at school, and they had good reason to
consider me whimsical and priggish. It took me many years to conquer
that arrogance, to act simply and like other people in the world; and
especially it was difficult for me to realize that one is not
necessarily superior to his fellows because he is (to his own
misfortune often) prince and conjurer in the realm of fancy.




                             CHAPTER LI.



The theatre wherein was enacted the "Donkey's Skin," very much
amplified and more elaborate, had now a permanent place in my aunt
Claire's room. Little Jeanne, more interested in it since the
additions to the scenery and the text, came over oftener; she painted
backgrounds under my direction, and the moments I enjoyed most were
those in which I impressed her with my great superiority. We had now a
box full of characters, each with a name and a role; and the fantastic
processions were made up of regiments of monsters, beasts and gnomes
made out of plaster and painted with water colors.

I recall our delight and enthusiasm when we tried for the first time
the effect of a scenic background which we had made to represent the
"void of heaven." Delicate rosy clouds, bespeaking the dawn, floated
over the blue expanse that was softened and paled by the gauze hanging
in front of it. And the chariot of a silken-haired fairy, drawn by two
butterflies and suspended on invisible threads, advanced towards the
centre of the scene.

But in spite of our efforts our work was never finished, for we took
no account of limitations; every day we had new ideas and ever more
and more wonderful projects, and the great comprehensive
representation was deferred from day to day, was postponed to a future
that never came.

Every undertaking of my life will be, or has already been, left
unfinished and incomplete as was that little play of the "Donkey's
Skin."




                             CHAPTER LII.



Among those professors who seemed, during my school-days, so severe,
and indeed almost cruel to me, the most terrible without any exception
were the "Bull of Apis" and the "Big Black Ape" (I had nicknames for
all of them). I hope should they read this they will understand that I
am writing from the child's view-point. Should I meet them to-day I
would, in all probability, humbly tender them my hand and ask their
pardon for having been such an unmanageable pupil.

Oh! the Big Ape especially, how I hated him! When from the height of
his desk these words fell upon my ear: "You will do a hundred lines; I
mean you, you little sap-head!" I could have flown at his face like an
enraged cat. He was the first to arouse in me those sudden and violent
outbursts of rage that characterized me as a man, outbreaks which
could scarcely have been foreseen in a child of my sweet and patient
disposition.

I would be doing myself a great injustice in saying that I was
altogether a bad scholar, I was, rather, an unequal and erratic one;
one day at the head of my class, the next day at the foot; but on the
whole I maintained a fair average, and at the end of the year I
received the prize for translation--I won no others however. It
surprised me that every one in the class did not receive the prize
that I had won without great effort, for translation was
extraordinarily easy for me. On the other hand I found composition
very difficult, and narration still more so.

Little by little I deserted my own work-desk, and in my aunt Claire's
room, near the china bon-bon bear, I underwent with as much
resignation as possible, the torture that the preparing of my tasks
imposed. On the wainscoting of the wall, in a hidden recess of the
room, there is still visible, among the other fantastical sketches, a
pen-portrait of the "Big Ape"; the ink has faded to a light yellow,
but the drawing has endured, and when I look at it I again feel a sort
of deadly weariness, and a sensation of suffocation chills me through
and through--in short I once more live over those dread school-days.

Aunt Claire was more than ever my resource during those hard times;
she always looked up words for me in the dictionary, and often she
took upon herself the task of writing for me, in an assumed hand, the
exercises exacted by the "Big Ape."




                            CHAPTER LIII.



Bring me, please, dear, the second . . . no, the third drawer of my
chiffonier.

It is mamma who is speaking; she is busying herself with the drawers
of the chiffonier which every day, for many years, she had asked me to
bring to her,--sometimes she pretends to need them merely for the
purpose of pleasing me by requiring my services. It was one of the
things that I was able to do for her when I was very little: to carry
to her one or another of those tiny drawers. It was an honored custom
in our household for a long time.

At the time of my life of which I am now writing it was in the
evening, at dusk, after my return from school, that I busied myself
carrying the little chiffonier drawers. I usually found mamma seated
in her accustomed place near the window chatting or embroidering, her
work basket was before her, and the bureau, whose different
compartments she required from time to time, was situated some
distance away, in an anteroom.

The Louis XVth chiffonier was very much revered, for it had belonged
to great-grandmothers. In it there were some very old and very tiny
painted boxes which had doubtless been handled every day by one or
another of our ancestresses. It goes without saying that I knew all
the secrets of these compartments that were kept in such exquisite
order; there was a special place for silks that was classified by
being put into ribbon bags; one for needles, another for braid, and
still another for little hooks. And these things were still arranged,
I have no doubt, as they had been in our grandmother's days, whose
saintly activity my mother imitated.

To bring the drawers of the chiffonier to mamma was the joy and pride
of my childhood, and there has been no change in my feelings for those
little compartments since that time. They have always inspired me with
the most tender respect; they are blended with the image of my mother
and they recall to me her beautiful, skillful hands, ever busy
manufacturing some pretty, useful article,--even to her last piece of
embroidery which was a handkerchief for me.

In my seventeenth year, when we met great reverses--at that troubled
time of which I will not speak here, but only mention because I have
already, in preceding chapters, touched upon the matter--we had to
face, for several months, the dreadful possibility of being obliged to
part with our old home and all the precious things that it contained.
At that time when I passed in review all the beloved memories and
habits and mementoes that I would need to break with, one of my most
agonizing thoughts was: "Never more will I be able to come and go in
the ante-chamber where the chiffonier stands, nor never again be able
to carry its precious little drawers to mamma."

And her very old-fashioned work-basket that I had begged her not to
discard, although it was much worn, with its little articles, needle
books, receptacles for thimbles and screws for holding the embroidery
frames! The thought that a time must surely come when the well-beloved
hands that daily touch these things will touch them no more, fills me
with so much sorrow that I am bereft of all courage and I struggle in
vain against invading sad emotions. Let me hope that as long as I live
it may remain as it is, that for so long it will be guarded with the
sacredness of a relic; but to whom can I bequeath this heirloom with
the assurance that it will be cherished? What will become of those
poor little trifles that are so precious to me?

That work-basket belonging to my mother, and the little drawers of the
old chiffonier are, I doubt not, the things that I will part with most
regretfully when the time comes for me to go into the world.

Truly all of this is very puerile and childish, and I am ashamed of
it;--and yet I am almost weeping as I write it.




                             CHAPTER LIV.



Because of the haste and confusion brought about by conflicting school
tasks, I had not for many months found time to read my Bible; indeed I
scarcely had time for a morning prayer.

I still went to church regularly every Sunday; that is we all went
there together. I reverenced the family pew where we had assembled for
so many years; and apart from that reason I hold it dear because it is
associated in my memory with my mother.

It was at church, however, that my faith continued to receive its most
damaging blows; it was there that religion seemed a cold and
meaningless term to me. Usually the commentaries, the narrow human
reasoning and dissection took away from the beauty of the Bible and
the Gospels, and deprived them of their grandly solemn and exquisite
poetry. For a peculiar nature like mine it was very difficult to have
any one touch upon holy subjects (in such a way as did the minister)
without in some measure, in my opinion, desecrating them. The family
worship, held every evening, awakened in me the only religious
meditation that I now knew, for the voice that read or prayed was
exceedingly dear to me, and that changed everything.

My untiring contemplation of nature, and the reflections that I
indulged in in the presence of the fossils I had brought from the
mountains and cliffs, and placed in my museum, indicated that there
had been bred in me a vague and unconscious pantheism.

In short my deeply rooted and still-living faith was covered over with
encumbering earth. At times it threw out a green shoot, but for the
most part it lay like an entirely dead thing in the cold ground.
Moreover, I was too much troubled to pray; my conscience, still
restive and timid, gave me no rest during the time that I was on my
knees,--I always felt remorse gnaw at me then because of the slovenly
and half-done tasks, and because of the feelings of hate I had for the
"Big Ape" and the "Bull of Apis," emotions that I was obliged to hide
and disguise until I shuddered at the falsehoods I spoke and acted.
These things gave me poignant remorse and excruciating moral distress,
and to escape from these emotions I indulged in noisy sports and
foolish laughter; and when my conscience troubled me most, and I dared
not, therefore, appear before my parents, I took refuge with the
servants, played tennis, jumped the rope, or make a great racket.

For two or three years I had not spoken of a religious vocation, for I
now understood that such a desire was a thing of the past, was
impossible; but I had not found anything to put in its place. When
strangers asked what career I was being prepared for, my parents, a
little anxious in regard to my future, did not know what to say; and I
knew still less what to reply.

However my brother, who was also much concerned over my enigmatical
future, in one of those letters that seemed always to come from an
enchanted land, suggested, because of a certain facility in
mathematics and a certain precision of nature, certainly anomalies in
one of my temperament, that it might be well for me to study
engineering. And when they consulted me and I replied apathetically:
"Very well, it is agreeable enough to me," the matter seemed
satisfactorily settled.

I would need to spend a little more than a year at a polytechnic
school in order to prepare myself. To be there or elsewhere, what
difference did it make to me? . . . When I contemplated the men of a
certain age who surrounded me, those occupying the most honorable
positions, who had every claim to respect and consideration, I would
say to myself: "It will some day be necessary for me to live a useful,
sedate life in a given place and fixed sphere as they do, and to grow
old as they are--and that is all!" And a bitter hopelessness
overwhelmed me as I brooded on the thought; I yearned for the
impossible; I longed most of all to remain a child forever, and the
reflection that the years were fleeing, and that, whether I would or
would not, I must become a man, was anguish to me.




                             CHAPTER LV.



Twice a week, in the history classes, I came in contact with the naval
students. To give themselves a sailor-like appearance they wore red
sashes, and they constantly drew ships and anchors on their copy-
books.

I never dreamed of that career for myself; scarcely oftener than once
or twice had such a thought passed through my mind and then it had
disquieted me: it was, however, the only life in which I could indulge
my taste for travel and adventure. It terrified me, this naval career,
more than any other because of the long exiles it imposed, exiles that
faith could no longer make seem endurable, as in the days when I had
expressed a desire to become a missionary.

To go far away as my brother had done; to be separated from my mother
and other beloved ones for years and years; not to see during that
time the little yard reclothe itself in green at the coming of the
spring, nor to see the roses bloom upon the old wall, no, I had not
the courage to undertake it.

Because it was assumed, doubtless because of my peculiar education,
that such a rough life was wholly unsuited to me. And I knew very
well, from some words that had been spoken in my hearing, that should
so wild an idea gain a lodgment with me my parents would withhold
their consent and thwart me in every way.




                             CHAPTER LVI.



On my Thursday holidays during the winter, after having finished my
duties and accomplished all my school tasks, I felt the greatest
homesickness when I mounted to my museum. It was always a little late
when I finished my lessons, and the light was usually fading when I
looked down at the great meadows that appeared inexpressibly
melancholy as they stretched before me enwrapped in a grayish-pink
mist. I was homesick for the summer, homesick for the sun and the
south, all of which were suggested by the butterflies from my uncle's
garden that I had arranged and pinned under glass, and by the mountain
fossils that the little Peyrals and I had collected in the summer
time.

It was a foretaste of that longing for somewhere else which later,
after my return from long voyages to tropical countries, spoiled my
visits to my home.

Oh! there was in particular the pinkish-yellow butterfly! There were
times when I experienced a bitter pleasure in seeking to understand
the great sadness that it caused me. It was in the glass case at the
far end of the room; its two colors so fresh and unusual, like a
Chinese painting, or a fairy's robe, were exquisite foils for each
other; the butterfly formed a luminous whole that shone out brightly
in the gray twilight, and it caused the other butterflies surrounding
it to look as dull as dun-colored little bats.

As soon as my eyes rested upon it I seemed to hear drawled out lazily,
in a mountaineer's treble, the refrain: "Ah! ah! the good, good
story!" And again I saw the white porch of Bories in the midst of the
silence and the hot sunshine of a summer noon. A deep regret for past
and gone vacations took possession of me; I felt saddened when I tried
to recreate days belonging to a dead past, and tried to imagine
vacations still to come; but mingled in with sentiments that I can
name, there were those other inexpressible ones that well up from the
unfathomable deeps of one's being.

This association between the butterfly, the song and Bories caused me
for a long time an extreme sadness that, try as hard as I may, I
cannot explain satisfactorily; and the feeling continued until stormy
and tempestuous winds swept over my life and carried away with them
the small concerns belonging to my childhood.

Sometimes, upon gray winters evenings, when I looked at the butterfly
I would sing to myself the little refrain of the "good, good story;"
to accomplish this I had to make my voice very flute-like; and as I
sang, the porch of Bories appeared to me more vividly than ever, as it
stood, sunny but desolate, under the dazzling light of the September
noon. This association was a little like the one that later
established itself for me between the sad falsetto of the Arab songs,
the snowy splendor of their mosques and the winding-sheet whiteness of
their lime-washed porticos.

That butterfly in all the freshness and radiance of its two strange
colors, mummified, it is true, but as brilliant looking as ever under
its glass, retains for me a sort of old-time charm which I cherish.
The little St. Hermangardes, whom I have not seen for many years, and
who are now attached to an embassy somewhere in the Orient, would
doubtless, should they read this, be much astonished to learn what
value circumstances has given to their little present.




                            CHAPTER LVII.



The chief event of these winters, so poisoned by my college life, was
the gift-giving festival that we had at New Year.

At about the end of November it was our custom, my sister's, Lucette's
and mine, to make out a list of the things we desired most. Everybody
in the two families prepared surprises for us, and the mystery
surrounding these gifts was our most exquisite pleasure during the
last days of the year. Between parents, grandmother and aunts there
occurred, to excite my curiosity still further, conversations full of
mysterious hints, and whisperings that were hastily discontinued as
soon as I appeared.

Between Lucette and me it became a real guessing game. As in the play
of "Words with a double meaning," we had the right to ask certain
pointed questions,--for example we asked the most ridiculous ones,
such as: "Has it hair like an animal?"

And the answers went something after this fashion:

What your father is to give you (a dressing-case made of leather) had
hair, but it has none now, except on some portion of its interior
(brushes), and that is false. Your mamma's present (a fur muff) still
has some hair. What your aunt is to give you (a lamp) will help you to
see the hair on the others better; but, let me see, yes, I am sure
that that has none.

In the December twilights, in that hour between daylight and darkness,
we would sit upon our low stools before the wood-fire, and continue
our series of questions from day to day. We grew ever more eager and
excited until the 31st, and in the evening of that momentous day the
mysteries were revealed.

That day the presents for the two families, wrapped, tied and labeled,
were piled upon tables in a room closed against Lucette and me. At
eight o'clock the doors were thrown open and we filed in, the elders
going first, and each one of us sought for his own gift among the heap
of white parcels. For me the moment of entry was an exceedingly joyous
one, and until I was twelve or thirteen years of age, I could not
refrain from jumping and leaping like a kid long before it came time
for us to cross the threshold.

We had supper at eleven, and when the clock in the dining room struck
the midnight hour, tranquilly, in harmony with the sound of its calm
stroke, we separated in the first moments of those New Years that are
now buried under the ashes of many succeeding ones. And on those
evenings I fell asleep with all my gifts in my room near me. I even
kept the favorite ones upon my bed. The following morning I always
waked earlier than usual so that I might re-examine them; they cast a
spell of enchantment over that winter morning, the first one of a new
year.

Once there was, among my presents, a large illustrated book treating
of the antediluvian world.

Through the study of fossils I had already been initiated into the
mysteries of prehistoric creations. I knew something about those
terrible creatures that in geologic times shook the primitive forests
with their heavy tread; for a long time the thought of them disquieted
me. I found them all in my book pictured in their proper habitat,
surrounded by great brakes, and standing under a leaden sky.

The antediluvian world already haunted my imagination and became the
constant subject of my dreams; often I concentrated my whole mind upon
it, and endeavored to picture to myself one of its gigantic landscapes
that seemed ever enveloped in a sinister and gloomy twilight with a
background filled in with great moving shadows. Then when the vision
thus created took on a seeming reality I felt an inexpressible sadness
that was like an exhalation of the soul,--as soon as the emotion
passed the dream-structure vanished.

Soon after this I sketched a new scene for the "Donkey's Skin;" it was
one representing the liassic period. I painted a dismal swamp
overshadowed by lowering clouds, where, in the shave-grass and the
gigantic ferns, strange extinct beasts wandered slowly.

The play of the "Donkey's Skin" seemed no longer the same Donkey's
Skin. I discarded one by one the little stage people who now offended
me by their uncompromising doll-like stiffness; they were relegated to
their card-board box, the poor little things, where they slept the
sleep eternal, and without doubt they will never be exhumed.

My new scenes had nothing in common with the old fairy spectacle: in
the depths of virgin forests, in exotic gardens, and oriental palaces
formed of pearls and gold I tried to realize, with the small means at
my command, all my dreams, while waiting for that improbable better
time that ever lies in the future.




                            CHAPTER LVIII.



That hard winter passed under the ferule of the "Bull of Apis" and the
"Great Ape," finally came to an end and spring returned; it was always
a troublous time for us, the scholars, for the first mild days gave us
a great longing to be out, and we could scarcely hide our
restlessness. The roses budded everywhere upon our old walls; my
beloved little garden, bright and warm under the March sunshine,
tempted me, and I would tarry there a long time to watch the insects
wake up, and to see the early butterflies and bees fly away. Even the
revised "Donkey's Skin" was neglected.

I was no longer escorted to and from school, for I had persuaded my
family to discontinue a custom that made me ridiculous in the eyes of
my companions. Often, before returning home, I would take a long and
roundabout way and pass by the peaceful ramparts from where I had
glimpses of other provinces, and a sight of the distant country.

I worked with even less zeal than usual that spring, for the beautiful
weather that tempted me out of doors turned my head and made study
almost impossible.

Assuredly one of the things for which I had the least aptitude was
French composition; I generally composed a mere rough draught without
a particle of embellishment to redeem it. In the class there was a boy
who was a very eagle, and he always read his lucubrations aloud. Oh!
with what unction he read out his pretty creations! (He is now settled
in a manufacturing town, and has become the most prosaic of petty
bailiffs.) One day the subject given out was: "A Shipwreck." To me the
words had a lyrical sound! But, nevertheless, I handed in my paper
with only the title and my name inscribed upon it. No, I could not
make up my mind to elaborate the subjects given to us by the "Great
Ape"; a sort of instinctive good taste kept me from writing trite
commonplaces, and as for putting down things of my own imagining, the
knowledge that they would be read and picked to pieces by the old
bogey made it impossible for me to compose anything.

I loved, however, even at this time, to write for myself, but I did it
with the greatest secrecy. Not in the desk in my room that was
profaned by lessons and copy-books, but in the little old-fashioned
one that was part of the furniture of my museum, there was hidden away
a unique thing that represented my first attempt at a journal. It
looked like a sibyl's conjuring book, or an Assyrian manuscript; a
seeming endless strip of paper was rolled upon a reed; at the head of
this there were two varieties of the Egyptian sphinx and a cabalistic
star drawn in red ink,--and under these mysterious signs I wrote down,
upon the full length of the paper and in a cipher of my own invention,
daily events and reflections. A year later, however, because of the
labor involved in transcribing the cryptographic characters I had
chosen I discarded them and used the ordinary letters; but I continued
my work with the greatest secrecy, and I kept my manuscript under lock
and key as if it were an interdicted book. I inscribed there, not so
much the events of my almost colorless existence, as my incoherent
impressions, the melancholy that I felt at twilight, my regret for
past summers, and my dreams of distant countries. . . . I already had
a longing to give my fugitive emotions a determinative quality, I
needed to wrestle against my own weaknesses and frailties and to
banish, if possible, the dream-like element that I seemed to discover
in all the things about me, and for that reason I continued my journal
until a few years ago. . . . But at that time the mere idea that a day
might come when someone would have a peep at it was insupportable to
me; so much so indeed that if I left home and went to the Island or
elsewhere for a few days, I always took care to seal up my journal,
and with the greatest solemnity I wrote upon the packet: "It is my
last wish that this book be burned without being read."

God knows, I have changed since then. But it would be going too far
beyond the limits of this story of my childhood to recount here
through what changes in my life's view-point it chances that I now
sing aloud of my woes, and cry out to the passers-by, for the purpose
of drawing to myself the sympathy of distant unknown ones; and I call
out with the greater anguish in proportion as I feel myself
approaching nearer and nearer to the final dust. . . . And who knows?
perhaps as I grow older I may write of those still more sacred things
which at present cannot be forced from me,--and by that means try to
prolong beyond the bounds of my individual life, memory of my being,
of my sorrows, and joys, and love.




                             CHAPTER LIX.



The return that spring of little Jeanne's father from a sea voyage
interested me greatly. For several days her house was topsy-turvy with
preparation, and one could guess the joy they felt over his
approaching arrival. The frigate that he commanded reached port a
little earlier than his family expected it, and from my window I saw
him, one fine evening, hurrying along the street alone, on his way
home to surprise his people. He had arrived from I know not which
distant colony after an absence of two or three years, but it did not
seem to me that he was the least altered in appearance. . . . One
could then return to his home unchanged? They did come to an end after
all, those years of exile, which now I find, in truth, much shorter
than they seemed in those days! My brother himself was to return the
following autumn, and it would doubtless then seem as if he had never
been away from us.

And what joyous events those home-comings were! And what a distinction
surrounded those who had but newly returned from so great a distance!

The next day in Jeanne's yard I watched them unpack the enormous
wooden boxes that her father had brought from strange countries; some
of them were covered with tarpaulin cloth,--pieces of sails no doubt,
that were impregnated with the agreeable odor of the ship and the sea;
two sailors wearing large blue collars were busy uncording and
unscrewing them; and they took from them strange looking objects that
had an odor of the "colonies;" straw mats, water jars and Chinese
vases; even cocoanuts and other tropical fruits.

Jeanne's grandfather, himself an old seaman, was standing near me
watching from the corner of his eye the process of unpacking;
suddenly, from between the boards of a case that was being broken open
with a hatchet, there crawled out hastily some ugly little brown
insects that the sailors jumped on with their feet and destroyed.

"Cockroaches are they not, Captain?" I inquired of the grandfather.

"Ha! How do you know that, you little landlubber?" he laughingly
responded.

To tell the truth, I had never seen any such insects before; but
uncles who had lived in the tropics often spoke of them. And I was
delighted to make the acquaintance of these tiny creatures that are
peculiar to ships and to warm countries.




                             CHAPTER LX.



Spring! Spring!

The white roses and the jasmine bloomed on our old garden wall, and
the deliciously fragrant honeysuckle hung its long garlands over it.

I began to live there from morning until night in closest intimacy
with the plants and the old stones. I listened to the sound of the
water as it plashed in the shade of the majestic plum tree, I studied
the grasses and the wood mosses that grew at the edge of my little
lake; and upon the warm side of the garden where the sun shone all
through the day, the cactus put out its buds.

My Wednesday evening trips to Limoise commenced again,--and it goes
without saying that I dreamed of the beloved place from one week to
the next to the detriment of my lessons and my other duties.




                             CHAPTER LXI.



I believe that that spring was the most radiant and the most
ravishingly happy one of my childhood, in contrast no doubt to the
terrible winter spent under the rigorous care of the Great Ape.

Oh! the end of May, the high grass and then the June mowing! In what a
glory of golden light I see it all again!

I took evening walks with my father and sister as I had done during my
earlier years; they now came to meet me at the close of school, at
half-past four, and we set out immediately for the fields. Our
preference that spring was for a certain meadow abloom with pink
amourettes, and I always brought home great bouquets of these flowers.

In that same meadow a migratory and ephemeral species of moth, black
and pink (of the same pink as the amourettes) had hatched out, and
they slept poised on the long stalks of the grass, or flew away as
lightly as the flowers shed their petals when we walked through the
hay. . . . And all of these things appear to me again as I saw them in
the exquisite, limpid June atmosphere. . . . During the afternoon
classes, the thought of the sun-dappled meadows made me more restless
than did even the mild air and the spring odors that came in through
the open windows.

I cherish particularly the remembrance of an evening in which my
mother had promised, as a special favor, to join us in our walk to the
fields of pink amourettes. That afternoon I had been more inattentive
than usual, and the Great Ape had threatened to keep me in, and all
during my lessons I firmly believed that I was to be punished. This
keeping in after school, which shut us away from the beautiful June
day an hour longer, was always a cruel torture. But to-day my heart
felt particularly heavy as I reflected that mamma would, doubtless,
come at the appointed hour and expect me,--and with some bitterness I
thought that the springtime was so very short, that the hay would soon
need to be cut, and that perhaps there would not be, the whole summer
long, such another glorious evening as this one.

As soon as school was over I anxiously consulted the fatal list in the
hands of the monitor; my name was not there! The Big Black Ape had
forgotten me, or had been merciful!

Oh! with what joy I rushed away to join mamma who had kept her promise
and who, with my father and sister, smilingly awaited me. . . . The
air that I breathed in was more delicious than ever, it was
exquisitely soft and balmy, and the atmosphere had a tropical
resplendence.

When I recall that time, when I think of those meadows all abloom with
amourettes, and of those pink moths, there is mingled, to my regret, a
sort of indefinable pain whose intensity I cannot understand, an
anguish I always feel when I find myself in the presence of things
that impress and charm me with their undercurrent of mystery.




                            CHAPTER LXII.



I have already said that I was extraordinarily childish for my years.

If the personage I then was could but be brought into the presence of
the little Parisian boys of twelve or thirteen, educated according to
the more perfect modern method, who at so early an age declaim,
discuss and harangue, and entertain all sorts of political ideas, I
would, I am sure, be struck dumb by their discourses, and how singular
they would find me and with what disdain they would treat me!

I am myself astonished at the childishness that I displayed in certain
ways, for in artistic perception and imagination, in spite of my lack
of method, and lack of real knowledge, I was incontestably more
advanced than are the majority of boys of my age; if that youthful
journal, the strip of paper wrapped about a reed in the similitude of
a conjuring-book, of which I spoke a short time ago, were still in
existence it would emphasize twenty fold this pale record, on which it
seems to me there has already fallen the dust of ages.




                            CHAPTER LXIII.



My room where I now scarcely ever installed myself to study, and which
I seldom entered except at night to sleep, became, during the
beautiful month of June, my palace of delight, and I went there after
dinner to enjoy the long, and mild, and beautiful twilights. I had
invented a sport which I deemed an improvement upon the rag-rat trick
that the dirty little street urchins whisked, at the end of long
strings, about the feet and legs of the passers-by. My game amused me
greatly and I prosecuted it with vivacity. It would, I think, amuse me
still if I dared play it, and I hope that my trick will be imitated by
all the youngsters who are imprudently allowed to read this chapter.

On the other side of the street, just opposite my window, and
similarly upon the second floor there lived the good old maid, Miss
Victoire--(she wore a great old-fashioned frilled cap and round
spectacles). I had obtained permission from her to fix to the
fastening of her shutter a string that I then brought all across the
street and into my window, the remainder of this string I rolled upon
a stick, ball-fashion.

In the evening, as soon as the light waned, a bird of my own
manufacture--a sort of absurd and impossible crow, made out of iron
wire and with black silk wings--came slyly from between my venetian
blinds that I immediately closed after the exit of the creature, this
bird descended in a droll way and posed on the paving stones in the
middle of the street. A ring on which it was suspended, and which
allowed it to slip freely the length of the string, was not visible
because of the dim light, and from time to time I made the crow hop
and skip comically about on the ground.

And when the passers-by paused to gaze at this unlikely looking bird
that fluttered about so gayly--whiz! I would pull the string that I
held firmly in my hand, and the bird would leap from under their very
noses and mount high in the air.

Oh! how amused I was, those beautiful evenings, when I peeped out from
behind my venetian blinds; how I laughed to myself over the surprised
exclamations and the bewilderment of those fooled, and how I enjoyed
rehearsing to myself their probable reflections and guesses. And to me
the most astonishing part was that after the first moment of surprise,
the persons whom I tricked laughed as heartily as I; it should be
mentioned that the majority of those passing were neighbors who must
certainly have had some inkling of the mystifying joke about to be
played on them. I was much loved in the neighborhood at that time. Or
if the pedestrians chanced to be sailors, the easy going fellows,
themselves only grown children, were much delighted with my child's
play.

What will always remain an incomprehensible mystery to me is that in
my family, where we seldom sinned through an excess of reserve towards
each other, they shut their eyes to my trick, and thus tacitly gave me
permission to play it during the entire spring; I am not able to
explain to myself how it chanced that they failed to correct me, and
the years instead of clearing up this mystery only serve to intensify
it.

That black bird has naturally become one of my many relics; at
intervals, during the past two or three years, I have looked at it; it
is somewhat dingy, but it always recalls to me the beautiful evenings
in June, now vanished, the delicious intoxication of that springtime
of long ago.




                            CHAPTER LXXIV.



Those Thursdays at Limoise when the fierce heat of the noon-day sun
overwhelmed everything, and the country side lay asleep and silent
under its pitiless rays, it was my habit to clamber up to the top of
the old wall that enclosed the garden, and there I sat astride and
immovable for a long time. The branching ivy reached to my shoulders
and innumerable flies and locusts buzzed around me. From the height of
this observatory I had a view of the hot and lonely region lying
beyond, of the moorland and woodland, and from there I saw a thin
white veil of mist that was agitated ceaselessly by the waves of heat,
as the surface of a tiny lake is ruffled by the least wind. Those
horizons seen from Limoise still had for me the strange mystery I had
endowed them with in the first summers of my life. The region visible
from the top of the wall was a rather solitary one, and I tried to
make myself believe that the waste land and woodland was a veritable
untrodden country that stretched out indefinitely; and although I now
knew well that about me everywhere there were roads; cultivated
fields, and prosperous villages, I succeeded in clinging to the
illusion that the surrounding country and contiguous lands were wild
and primitive.

And the better to deceive myself I took care to shut out, by looking
through my fingers folded together spy-glass fashion, all that would
have spoiled for me the impression of loneliness; an old farm house,
for instance, with its bit of cultivated vineyard and smooth road.

And there all alone, in that silence murmurous with the buzzing of
many insects, distracted by nothing, always turning my hollowed hand
towards the most desolate portion of the landscape, I succeeded in
gaining an impression of distant, tropical countries.

I had impressions of Brazil particularly, but I do not know why in
those moments of contemplation the neighboring forest always suggested
that country to me.

In passing I must describe this forest, the first one of all the
earth's forests that I knew, and the one I loved the best: the
straight, slim trunks of the ancient evergreen oaks, of sombre
foliage, were like the columns of a church; not a particle of brush
grew under them, but the dry soil was covered all the year with the
most exquisite short grass, soft and fine as down, and here and there
grew furze, dropwort and other rare flowers that thrive in the shade.




                             CHAPTER LXV.



The Iliad was being explained to us in class,--no doubt I would have
loved it, but our master had made it odious by his analysis, his
difficult tasks and his parrot-like recitals;--but suddenly I stopped,
filled with admiration of a famous line, whose end is musical as the
murmur of the waves of the incoming tide as they spread their sheets
of foam upon the pebbly shore.

"Observe," said the Big Ape, "observe the inceptive harmony."

Zounds! Yes, I had observed it. Little need to take the trouble to
point out such a sentence to me.

I also had a great admiration, less justified perhaps, for some lines
from Virgil.

Since the beginning of the Ecloque I had, with the greatest interest,
followed the two shepherds as they made their way across the fields of
ancient Rome. I could picture it to myself so vividly, those Roman
meadows of two thousand years ago: hot, a little sterile, with
thickets of almost petrified shrubs, and evergreen oaks like the stony
moorland of Limoise, where I had experienced precisely the pastoral
charm that I discovered in this description of a past time.

Onward went the two shepherds, and suddenly, they perceived that their
journey was half over, "because the tomb of Bianor was immediately
below them . . ." Oh! how vividly I saw that tomb of Bianor disclose
itself to their view. Its old stones, that made a white blot on the
reddish road, were covered with tiny sun-scorched plants, wild thyme
or marjoram, and here and there grew stunted dark foliaged shrubs. And
the sonority of the word Bianoris with which the sentence ended
suddenly and magically evoked for me the musical humming of the
insects that buzzed around the two travellers who, upon that bygone
day in June, walked onward in the great silence and serene
tranquillity of the hot noon enkindled by a younger sun. I was no
longer in the schoolroom; I was in the meadows with the shepherds
walking with them this radiant summer day through the sun-scorched
flowers and grass of a Roman field,--but still all seemed softened and
vague as if looked at through a telescope that had the power to draw
into its line of vision ages long past.

Who knows? Perhaps if the Big Ape could but have divined the causes
that led to my momentary inattention it might have brought about an
understanding between us.




                            CHAPTER LXVI.



One Thursday evening at Limoise, just before the inevitable hour for
my departure, I went up alone to the large, old room on the second
floor in which I slept. First I leaned out of the open window to watch
the July sun sink behind the stony fields and fern heaths that lay
towards the sea, which though very near us was invisible. These
sunsets at the end of my Thursday holidays always overwhelmed me with
melancholy.

During the last minutes of my stay I felt a desire, one I had never
known before, to rummage in the old Louis XV bookcase that stood near
my bed. There among the volumes in their century-old bindings, where
the worms, never disturbed, slowly bored their galleries, I found a
book made of thick rough old-fashioned paper, and this I opened
carelessly. . . . In it I read, with a thrill of emotion, that from
noon until four o'clock in the afternoon, on the 20th of June, 1813,
south of the equator, in longitude 110 and latitude 15 (between the
tropics, consequently, and in the middle of the South Pacific Ocean)
there was fair weather, a beautiful sea, a fine southeast breeze, and
in the sky many little clouds called "cat-tails," and that alongside
the ship dolphins were passing.

He who had seen the dolphins pass, and who had recorded the fugitive
cloud forms had doubtless been dead for many years. I knew that the
book was what is called a ship's log-book, one in which seafaring
people write every day. Its appearance did not strike me as strange,
although I had never before had one in my hand. But for me it was a
wonderful and unexpected experience to thus suddenly come into a
knowledge of the aspect of the sea and sky in the midst of the South
Pacific Ocean, at a given time in a year long past. . . . Oh! for a
glimpse of that beautiful and tranquil sea, of those "cat-tails" that
dotted the deep blue arch of the sky, and of those dolphins that
swiftly traversed the lonely southern waters!

In this sailor's life, in this profession so terrifying (a career
forbidden to me), how many delightful things happened! I had never
until this evening realized it with such intensity.

The memory of that hasty little reading is the reason why, during my
watches at sea, whenever a helmsman signals a passage of dolphins, I
have always turned my eyes in their direction to watch them; and it
has always given me a peculiar pleasure to note the incident in the
log-book, differing so little from the one in which the sailors of
June, 1813, had written before me.




                            CHAPTER LXVII.



During the vacation that followed, our departure for the south and the
mountains enchanted me more than did my first trip there.

As in the preceding summer we started, my sister and I, at the
beginning of August. While it was no longer a journey of adventure,
the pleasure of returning and again finding there all the things that
had formerly so delighted me surpassed the charm of going forth to
meet the unknown.

Between the point where the railroad ended and the village in which
our cousins lived, in the course of the long carriage ride, our little
coachman, in venturing to take what he supposed a short cut, lost his
way, and he carried us into the most exquisite forest nooks. The
weather was beautiful and radiant. With what joy I saluted the first
peasant women whom I saw walking along with great copper water-jars
upon their heads, and the first swarthy peasants conversing in the
well remembered dialect, how I rejoiced when we rolled along over the
blood-colored roads, and when the mountains junipers came into view.

At about noon-time we stopped in a shady valley in a sequestered
village called Veyrac to rest our horses, and we seated ourselves at
the foot of a chestnut tree. There we were attacked by the ducks of
the place, the boldest and most ill bred in the world. They flocked
around us in an unseemly manner, uttering shrill cries and quacking
hideously. As we departed, even after we were in our carriage, these
infuriated creatures followed us; whereupon my sister turned towards
them, and with all the dignity of an old-time traveller outraged by an
inhospitable population exclaimed: "Ducks of Veyrac, be ye accursed!"
And for several years I could not keep a straight face when I
remembered the foolish and prolonged laughter that I indulged in at
the time. Above all I cannot think of that day without regretting the
resplendence of the sun and the blue sky, a resplendence that I never
see now.

As we drew near we were met on our way at the bridge spanning the
river, by our cousins and the Peyrals. I discovered with pleasure that
my little band was complete. We had all grown taller by several
inches; but we found immediately that we were not otherwise changed,
we were still children ready for the same childish games.

At night-fall there was a terrific storm. And while the thunder boomed
around us as if it was bombarding the roof of my uncle's house, and
when all the old stone gargoyles in the village were pouring forth
torrents of water that rushed tumultuously over the black pebbles in
the street, we took refuge, the little Peyrals and I, in the kitchen,
and there we made a racket and joyously danced around in a ring.

It was a very large kitchen, furnished in an old-fashioned way with a
perfect arsenal of burnished copper utensils; every variety of pan and
kettle, shining like pieces of armor, hung on the halls in the order
of their size. It was almost dark, and from the moist earth came the
fresh odor one usually smells after a storm, after a summer rain; and
through the thick iron-barred Louis XIII windows the lurid, green
lightning flashed incessantly and blinded us and compelled us, in
spite of ourselves, to close our eyes. We turned round and round like
mad beings, and sang together: "The star of night whose peaceful
light." . . . It was a sentimental song, never intended for dance
music, but we scanned it drolly and mockingly, and thus made of it an
accommodating and tuneful dance measure. We continued our joyous sport
for I do not know how long a time; we were excited by the noise of the
storm and we whirled around like little dervishes; it was a merry-
making in celebration of my return; it was a fitting way of
inaugurating the holidays; it was a defiance to the Big Ape, and it
was an appropriate prologue to the series of expeditions and childish
sports of every kind that were to recommence, with more ardor than
ever, the next day.




                           CHAPTER LXVIII.



The following morning at daybreak when I awoke, a noisy cadence, to
which I was unaccustomed, fell upon my ears; the neighboring weaver
had already commenced, even with the dawn, to work his ancient loom,
and the musical to and fro of its shuttle had roused me. Then after
the first drowsy, dreamy moment I remembered, with overwhelming joy,
that I was at my uncle's in the south; that this was the morning of
the first day; that I had before me the prospect of a whole summer of
out-of-door life and wildest liberty--had August and September, two
months that at present pass as quickly as if they were but two days,
but which then seemed of a fairly respectable duration. With a feeling
of rapture, after I had wholly shaken off my sleep, I came into a full
consciousness of myself and the realities of my life; I felt "joy at
my waking."

The preceding winter I had read a story of the Indians of the Great
Lakes, and one thing in it had impressed me so deeply that I always
remembered it: an old Indian chief, whose daughter was pining away
because of her love for a white man, had finally consented to give her
to the alien so that she might once more feel "joy at her waking."

Joy at her waking! Indeed, for some time I had myself noticed that the
moment of waking is always the one in which I had the most distinct
and vivid impression of joy or sorrow; and it is then, at the waking
hour, that one finds it so particularly painful to be without joy; my
first little sorrows and remorses, my anxieties about the future, were
the things that usually obtruded themselves cruelly--however the
feeling of sadness vanished very quickly in those days.

At a later time I had very gloomy and sad awakenings. And there are
times now when I have moments of terrifying clearness of vision during
which I seem to see, if I may so express it, into the depths of life;
it is at such moments that life presents itself to me without those
pleasing mirages that during the day still delude me; during those
moments I appear to have a more vivid realization of the rapid flight
of the years, the crumbling away of all that I endeavor to hold to, I
almost realize the final unimaginable nothingness, I see the
bottomless pit of death, near at hand, no longer in any way disguised.

But that morning I had a joyful awaking, and unable to remain quietly
in bed, I rose immediately. So impatient was I to be out that I
scarcely took time to ask myself where I should begin my first day's
round of visits.

I had all the nooks and corners of the village to see again, the
gothic ramparts and the lovely river; and my uncle's garden to
revisit, where probably, since last year, the rarest butterflies had
become domiciled. I had visits to make to the ancient and curious
houses in the neighborhood, where lived all the kind old women who, in
the past summer, had lavished upon me their most luscious grapes as if
they were my feudal due;--there was in particular a certain Madame
Jeanne, a rich old peasant, who had taken so great a fancy to me that
she liked to humor my every whim, and who, for my amusement, every
time she passed on her way, like Nausicaa, from the washing-place,
looked comically out of the corner of her eyes towards my uncle's
house. And, too, there were the surrounding vineyards, and woods, and
mountain paths; and beyond, Castelnau, rearing its battlements and
towers above the pedestal of chestnuts and oak trees, called me to its
ruins! Where should I run first, and how could I ever weary of so
beautiful a land!

The sea, to which I was now scarcely ever taken, was for the moment
completely forgotten.

After these two happy months school was to re-open. I could not bear
to think of it, but its monotony would be broken by a great event, the
return of my brother. His four years were not quite completed; but we
knew that he had already left the "mysterious island," and we expected
him to arrive home in October. For me it would be like becoming
acquainted with a stranger. I was somewhat anxious to know whether he
would love me when he met me, if he would approve of a thousand little
things I did,--how, for instance, my way of playing Beethoven would
please him.

I thought constantly of his approaching arrival; I was so overjoyed,
and I anticipated with so keen a delight the change his coming would
make in my life, that I did not feel a particle of the melancholy
which usually beset me in the autumn.

I meant to consult him about a thousand troublous matters, to confide
to him all my anguish and uncertainty in regard to the future; I knew
also that my parents depended upon him to give them definite advice
about me, and expected him to direct me towards a scientific career:
that was the one dark spot upon his return.

Awaiting his dread decision, I threw aside all care and amused myself
as gayly as possible; I put even less restraint than usual upon myself
during the vacation which I regarded as likely to be the very last of
my childhood.




                            CHAPTER LXIX.



After the noon dinner it was the custom in my uncle's house to sit for
an hour or two in the entry-way of the house, that vestibule inlaid
with flagstones and ornamented with a large, burnished, copper
fountain, for it was the coolest place during the heated period of the
day. Here it was almost dark, for everything was closed; two or three
rays of sunshine, in whose light the flies danced, filtered in through
the cracks of the massive Louis XIII door. In the silent village no
one was astir, and one heard there only the everlasting clucking of
the hens,--all other living creatures seemed asleep.

I, however, did not remain long in the cool vestibule. The bright
sunshine lured me out; and, too, scarcely had I installed myself there
in the circle before I heard a knocking at the street door: the three
little Peyrals had come to fetch me, and to apprise me of their
presence they lifted the old iron knocker that was hot enough to burn
their fingers.

Then with hats pulled over our eyes and equipped with hammers, staffs
and butterfly-nets we would start out in search of new adventures.
First we passed through the narrow gothic streets paved with pebbles,
then we struck into the paths that lay just beyond the village, paths
that were always covered with wheat-chaff that got into our shoes, and
into which we sank ankle deep; finally we reached the open country,
the vineyards, and the roads that led to the woods, or better still
those that brought us to the river which we forded by means of the
flower-covered islets.

This wild liberty was a complete avengement for the monotony of my
cribbed and cabined home life, ever the same all the year through; but
I still lacked the companionship of little boys of my own age, I
needed to clash with them,--and, too, this freedom lasted only a
couple of months.




                             CHAPTER LXX.



One day I had a great desire, wherefore I do not know, unless out of
pure bravado and the spirit of perversity, to do something unseemly.
After having searched all of one morning for this something I found
it.

It is well known that the swarms of flies which one finds in the south
during the summer, and which contaminate everything are a veritable
plague. I knew that there was a trap set for them in the middle of my
uncle's kitchen. It was a treacherous pipe of a special shape, at the
bottom of which, in the soapy pan of water there, the flies were
invariably drowned. Now on the particular day in which I felt so
devilish I bethought me of that disgusting blackish mass at the bottom
of the vessel, made up of the thousands of flies drowned during the
past two or three days, and I wondered what sort of toothsome dish I
should make of it, a pancake, perhaps, or better still, an omelette.

Quickly and nervously, and with a loathing that almost made me vomit,
I poured the pasty black mass into a plate and carried it to the house
of old Madame Jeanne, the only one in the world willing to do anything
and everything for me.

"A fly omelette! To be sure! Why not! That is very simple!" she
exclaimed. She went immediately to the fire with a frying pan and some
eggs. She gave the unclean mess a good preliminary beating, and then
she placed it on her high and ancient fireplace. As I watched her
procedure I was dismayed and surprised at myself.

But the three little Peyrals, whom I had met unexpectedly, went into
such ecstasies over my idea, a thing they always did, that I was
fortified; and when the omelette, at just the right time, was turned
out hot upon a plate we started forth triumphantly to carry the
exhibit home to show to our families. We formed a procession in the
order of our respective heights, and as we marched we sang, "The Star
of Night" in voices loud and hoarse enough to summon the devil to
earth.




                            CHAPTER LXXI.



In the mountains the end of summer was always a beautiful season, for
the meadows lying at the foot of the hillside forests, already yellow,
were purple with crocuses. Then, too, the vintage commenced and lasted
for about fifteen days,--days of enchantment for us.

We now spent most of our time in the shady nooks of the woods and
meadows in the neighborhood of the Peyral vineyards; there we had
play-dinners consisting of candy and fruits. We would spread out on
the grass what we considered a most elegant cloth, and this we
decorated, after the old fashion, with garlands of flowers, and we put
on it plates made of yellow and red vine leaves. The vintagers brought
us the most luscious grapes, bunches chosen from among a thousand;
and, with the heat of the sun to aid, we sometimes became a little
tipsy, not, however, made so by sweet wine, for we had drunk none, but
by the juice of the grapes merely, in the self-same fashion as did the
wasps and flies that warmed themselves upon the trellises. . . .

One morning at the end of September, when the weather was rainy and it
was chilly enough for me to realize that melancholy autumn was near at
hand, I was attracted into the kitchen by the bright wood fire that
leaped gayly in the high, old-fashioned chimney-place. And as I stood
there, idle and out of sorts, because of the rain, I amused myself by
melting a pewter plate and plunging it, in its liquid state, into a
pail of water.

The result was a shapeless, bright, and silvery-gray lump which very
much resembled silver-ore. I looked at the mass thoughtfully for some
time: an idea germinated, and there and then I planned a new amusement
which became our most delightful pastime during those last days of
vacation.

That same evening we held a conference on the steps of the great
stairway, and I told the Peyrals that from the aspect of the soil and
the plants I had come to the conclusion that there were silver mines
in this part of the country. As I spoke I assumed the knowing and bold
airs of one of those venturesome scouts, who is usually the principal
personage in old-fashioned stories of American adventure.

Searching for mines fell well into line with the abilities of my
little band, for often, armed with pick and shovel, they had set out
to discover fossils or rare stones.

The next day, therefore, half way up the mountain, when we arrived at
a path chosen by me for its appropriateness, for it was lonely and
mysterious, shut in by forest trees and embedded between high, moss-
grown, rocky banks, I stopped my little band peremptorily, as if I
were endowed with the keen scent of an Indian chief. I pretended that
I had here recognized the presence of precious ore-beds; and, in
truth, when we dug in the place I indicated we found the first
nuggets, the melted plate that I had buried there the day before.

These mines occupied us constantly until the end of my stay. The
Peyrals were convinced and full of amazement, and although I spent
some time each morning in the kitchen melting plates and covers to
feed our vein of silver, I very nearly deluded myself into believing
in the reality of the mine.

The isolated silent spot, so exquisitely beautiful, where these
excavations took place, and the melancholy but enchanting serenity of
the end of summer, gave a rare charm to our little dream of adventure.
We were, however, most amusingly secret and mysterious in regard to
our discovery; we considered it a tribal secret, and we cherished it
as such.

Our riches, mixed in with some of the red mountain soil, we hoarded in
an old trunk in my uncle's attic as if the latter were an Ali Baba's
cave.

We pledged ourselves to leave it there during the winter, until the
next vacation, at which time we counted on making additions to our
treasure.




                            CHAPTER LXXII.



In the first week of October we received a joyous telegram from our
father bidding us leave for home as speedily as possible. My brother,
who was returning to Europe by a packet-boat on its way from Panama,
was to disembark at Southampton; we had but just time to reach home if
we wished to be there to welcome him.

We arrived the evening of the third day just in time, for my brother
was expected a few hours later on the night train. I had barely time
to put into his room, in their accustomed places, the various little
trinkets that he had four years previously confided to my care, before
the hour set for our departure to the station to meet him. To me his
return, announced so unexpectedly, did not seem a reality, and I was
so excited that for two nights I scarcely slept at all.

This is why, in spite of my impatience to see my brother, I fell
asleep at the station; when he appeared it seemed a sort of dream to
me. I embraced him timidly, for he was very different from my mental
image of him. He was bronzed and bearded, his manner of speech was
more rapid, and, with a slightly smiling, slightly anxious expression,
he regarded me fixedly, as if to ascertain what the years had done for
me, and to deduce from that what my future was to be.

When I returned home I fell asleep standing; it wad the dead
sleepiness of a child fatigued by a long journey, against which it is
futile to struggle, and I was carried to my bed.




                           CHAPTER LXXIII.



I awaked the following morning with a feeling of joyousness that
penetrated to the very depths of my being, and as I remembered the
cause for my happiness my eyes fell upon an extraordinary object
standing on a table in my room. It was evidently a very slim canoe
with a balance beam and sails. Then my gaze encountered other
unfamiliar objects scattered about: necklaces of shells strung on
human hair, head-dresses of feathers, ornaments appertaining to a dark
and primitive savagery; it was as if distant Polynesia had come to me
during my sleep. My brother, it seems had already begun to open his
cases, and while I slept he had slipped noiselessly into my room and
grouped around me these ornaments intended for my museum.

I jumped out of bed quickly so that I might go and find him, for I had
scarcely seen him the evening before.




                            CHAPTER LXXIV.



And it seems I hardly saw him during those hurried weeks that he spent
with us. Of that period, which lasted so short a time, I have very
confused visions, similar to those one has of things seen during a
rapid journey. I remember vaguely that we lived more gayly, and that
his presence among us brought many young people to our house. I
remember also that he seemed at times to be preoccupied and absorbed
by things entirely outside the family sphere; perhaps he had longings
for the tropics, for the "delicious island," or it may be he dreaded
his early departure.

Sometimes I held him captive near the piano by playing for him the
haunting music of Chopin which I had but just begun to understand. He
was disquieted however by my playing, and he said that Chopin's music
was too exuberant and at the same time too enervating for me. He had
come among us so recently that he was better able to judge of me than
were the others, and he realized perhaps that my intellect was in
danger of becoming warped through the nature of the artistic and
intellectual effort it put forth; no doubt he thought Chopin and the
"Donkey's Skin" equally dangerous, and considered that I was becoming
excessively affected and abnormal in spite of my fits of childish
behavior. I am sure that he thought even my amusements were fanciful
and unhealthy. Be that as it may, he one day, to my great joy, decreed
that I should learn to ride horseback, but that was the only change
his coming made in my education. Cowardice prompted me to defer
discussion of those weighty questions appertaining to my future which
I was so anxious to talk over with him; I preferred to take my time,
and, too, I shrunk from making a decision, and thus by my silence I
sought to prolong my childhood. Besides, I did not consider it a
pressing matter after all, inasmuch as he was to be with us for some
years. . . .

But one fine morning, although we had reckoned so largely on keeping
him, there came news of a higher rank and an order from the naval
department commanding him to start without delay for a distant part of
the orient, where an expedition was organizing.

After a few days which were mainly spent in preparing for that
unforeseen campaign he left us as if borne away by a gust of wind.

Our adieus were less sad this time, for we did not expect him to be
absent more than two years. . . . In reality it was his eternal
farewell to us; whatever is left of his body lies at the bottom of the
Indian Ocean, towards the middle of the Bay of Bengal.

When he had departed, while the noise of the carriage that was bearing
him away could still be heard, my mother turned to me with an
expression of love that touched me to the very innermost fibre of my
being; and as she drew me to her she said with the emphasis of
conviction: "Thank God, at least we shall keep you with us!"

Keep me! . . . They would keep me! . . . Oh! . . . I lowered my head
and turned my eyes away, for I could feel that their expression had
changed, had become a little wild. I could not respond to my mother
with a word or a caress.

Such a serene confidence upon her part distressed me cruelly, for the
moment in which I heard her say, "We shall keep you," I understood,
for the first time in my life, what a firm hold on my mind the project
of going away had taken--of going even farther than my brother, of
going everywhere upon the face of the earth.

A sea-faring life terrified me, and I relished the idea of it as
little as ever. To a little being like me, so greatly attached to my
home, bound to it by a thousand sweet ties, the very thought of it
made my heart bleed. And besides, how could I break the news of such a
decision to my parents, how give them so much pain and thus flagrantly
outrage their wishes! But to renounce all my plans, always to remain
in the same place, to be upon this earth, and to see nothing of it--
what a squalid, disenchanting future! What was the use to live, what
the good of growing up for that?

And in that empty parlor with its disordered chairs, one even
overturned, and while I was still under the dark spell of our sad
farewells, there beside my mother, leaning against her with eyes
turned away and with soul overwhelmed with sorrow, I suddenly
remembered the old log-book which I had read at sunset last spring at
Limoise. The short sentences written down upon the old paper with
yellow ink came slowly back to me one after the other with a charm as
lulling and perfidious as that exercised by a magic incantation:

"Fair weather . . . beautiful sea . . . light breeze from the south-
east . . . Shoals of dolphins . . . passing to larboard."

And with a shudder of almost religious awe, with pantheistic ecstasy,
my inward eye saw all about me the sad and vast blue splendor of the
South Pacific Ocean.

A great calm, tinged with melancholy, fell upon us after my brother's
departure, and to me the days were monotonous in the extreme.

They had always thought of sending me to the Polytechnic school, but
it had not been decided upon irrevocably. The wish to become a sailor,
which had obtruded itself upon me almost against my will, charmed and
terrified me in an almost equal degree; I lacked the courage necessary
to settle such a grave matter with myself, and I always hesitated to
speak of it. The upshot was that I decided to reflect over it until my
next vacation, and thus by my irresolution and delay I secured to
myself a few more months of careless childhood.

I still led as solitary a life as ever; it was very difficult for me
to change the bent that my mind had taken in spite of my mental
distress and in spite of my latent desire to roam far and wide over
the earth. More than ever I stayed in the house and busied myself
painting stage scenery, and playing Chopin and Beethoven; to all
appearances I was tranquil and deeply absorbed in my dreams, and I
became ever more and more attached to my home, to its every nook and
corner, even to the stones in its walls. It is true that now and again
I took a horseback ride, but I always went with a groom and never with
children of my own age--I still had no young playmates.

My second year at college was much less painful than my first; it
passed more quickly, and moreover I had formed an attachment for two
of my classmates, my elders by a year or two, the only ones who had
not the preceding year treated me disdainfully. The thin ice once
broken, there had sprung up between us an ardent and sentimental
friendship; we even called each other by our baptismal names,
something that was contrary to school etiquette. Since we never saw
each other except in the schoolroom, we were obliged to communicate in
mysterious whispers under the teacher's eye, our relations,
consequently, were inalterably courteous and did not resemble the
ordinary friendship between boys. I loved them with all my heart; I
would have allowed myself to be cut into bits for them; and, in all
sincerity, I imagined that this affection would endure throughout my
life.

My excessive exclusiveness caused me to treat the others in the class
with great indifference and haughtiness; still a certain superficial
self, necessary for social purposes, had already begun to take shallow
root, and I knew better now how to remain on good terms with them, and
at the same time to keep my true self hidden from them.

I generally contrived to sit between my two friends, Andre and Paul.
If, however, we were separated we continually and slyly exchanged
notes written in a cipher to which we alone had the key.

These letters were always love confidences: "I have seen her to-day;
she wore a blue dress trimmed with gray fur, and she had a lark's wing
on her turban, etc."--For we had chosen sweethearts who became the
subject of our very poetical prattle.

Something of the ridiculous and whimsical invariably marks this
transition age in a boy's life, and for that reason I have thought it
worth while to transcribe the boyish note.

Before going further I wish to say that my transition periods have
lasted longer than do those of the majority of men, and during them I
have been carried from one extreme to another; and, too they have
caused me to touch all the perilous rocks along life's way,--I am also
fully conscious of the fact that until almost my twenty-fifth year I
had eccentric and absurd manners. . . .

But now I will continue with my confidences respecting our three love
affairs.

Andre was ardently in love with a young lady almost six years older
than himself who had already been introduced into society,--I believe
that his affair was a case of real and deep affection.

I had chosen Jeanne for my sweetheart, and my two friends were the
only beings who knew my secret. To do as they did, although I
considered it a little silly, I wrote her name in cipher on the covers
of my copy-books; in every way and manner I sought to persuade myself
of the ardor of my passion, but I am bound to admit that the whole
thing was a little artificial, for the amusing coquetry that Jeanne
and I had indulged in early in our acquaintance had developed into a
true and great friendship, a hereditary friendship I may call it, a
continuation of that felt by our ancestors long before our birth. No,
my first real love, of which I will soon speak, was for a being seen
in a dream.

As for Paul--alas! His heart affair was very shocking to me, for it
did particular violence to the ideas that I then had. He was in love
with a little shop-girl who worked in a perfumery store, and on his
Sunday holidays he gazed at her through the show-case window. It is
true that she was named Stella or Olympia, and that raised her
somewhat in my esteem; and, too, Paul took pains to surround his love
with an ethereal and poetic atmosphere in order to make it more
acceptable to us. At the bottom of his cipher notes he constantly
wrote, for our benefit, the sweetest rhymed verses dedicated to her,
wherein her name, ending in "a," recurred again and again, like the
perfume of musk.

In spite of my great affection for him I could not but smile pityingly
over his poetic effusions. And I think that it is partly because of
them that I have never, at any epoch in my life, had the least
inclination to write a single line of verse. My notes were always
written in a wild and free prose that outraged every rule.




                            CHAPTER LXXVI.



Paul knew by heart many verses of a forbidden poet named Alfred de
Musset. The strange quality of these verses troubled me, and yet I was
fascinated by them. In class he would whisper them, in a scarcely
perceptible voice, into my ear; and although my conscience accused me,
I used to allow him to begin:


  Jacque was very quiet as he looked at Marie,
  I know not what that sleeping maiden
  Had of mystery in her features, the noblest ever seen.


In my brother's study, where from time to time, when I was overwhelmed
with sorrow over his departure, I isolated myself, I had seen on a
shelf in his book-case a large volume of this poet's works, and often
I had been tempted to take it down; but my parents had said to me:
"You are not to touch any of the books that are there without
permission from us," and my conscience always gave me pause.

As to asking for permission, I knew only too well that my request
would be refused.




                           CHAPTER LXXVII.



I will here recount a dream that I had in my fourteenth year. It came
to me during one of those mild and sweet nights that are ushered in by
a long and delicious twilight.

In the room where I had spent all the years of my childhood I had been
lulled to sleep by the sound of songs that the sailors and young girls
sang as they danced around the flower-twined May-pole. Until the
moment of deep sleep I had listened to those very old national airs
which the children of the people were singing in a loud, free voice,
but distance softened and mellowed and poetized the voices as they
traversed the tranquil silence; strangely enough I had been soothed by
the noisy mirth and overflowing joyousness of these beings who, during
their fleeting youth, are so much more artless than we, and more
oblivious of death.

In my dream it was twilight, not a sad one however, but on the
contrary, the air was soft and mild and overflowing with sweet odors
like that of a real May night. I was in the yard of our house, the
aspect of which was not changed in any particular, but as I walked
beside the walls all abloom with jasmine, honeysuckle and roses, I
felt restless and troubled as if I was seeking for some unnamable
something; I seemed to have a consciousness that someone, whom I
wished ardently to see, awaited my coming; I felt as if there was
about to happen to me something so strange and wonderful as to
intoxicate me by its very advance.

At a spot where grew a very old rosebush, one that had been planted by
an ancestor and for that reason guarded sacredly, although it did not
bear more than one rose in two or three years, I saw a young girl
standing motionless with a seductive and mysterious smile upon her
lips.

The twilight became a little deeper, the air more languorous.

Everywhere it became darker; but about her shone a sort of
indeterminate light, like that coming from a reflector, and her figure
outlined itself clearly against the shadows in the background.

I guessed that she was very beautiful and young; but her forehead and
her eyes were hidden from me by the veil of night; indeed, I could see
nothing very distinctly except the exquisite oval of her lower face,
and her mouth which was parted smilingly. She leaned against the old
flowerless rosebush, almost in its branches. Night came on rapidly.
The girl seemed perfectly at home in the garden; she had come I knew
not from where, for there was no door by which she could have entered;
she appeared to find it as natural to be here as I found it natural to
find her here.

I drew very close in order to get a glimpse of her eyes which puzzled
me; suddenly, in spite of the darkness that became ever thicker, I saw
them very distinctly; they also were smiling like the lips;--and they
were not just any impersonal eyes, such, for instance, as may be found
in a statue representing youth; no, on the contrary they were very
particularly somebody's eyes; more and more they impressed me as
belonging to someone already much beloved whom I, with transports of
infinite joy and tenderness had found again.

I waked from sleep with a start, and as I did so I sought to retain
the phantom being who faded away and became more and more intangible
and unreal, in proportion as my mind grew clearer through the effort
it made to remember. Could it be possible that she was not and had
never been more than a vision? Had nothingness re-engulfed and forever
effaced her? I longed to sleep again so that I might see her; the
thought that she was an illusion, nothing more than the figment of a
dream, caused me great dejection and almost overwhelmed me with
hopelessness.

And it took me a very long time to forget her; I loved her, loved her
tenderly, and the thought of her always stirred into life an emotion
that was sweet but sad; and during those moments everything
unconnected with her seemed colorless and worthless. It was love, true
love with all its great melancholy and deep mystery, with its
overwhelming but sad enchantment, love that, like a perfume, endows
with a fragrance all it touches; and that corner of the garden where
she had appeared to me and the old flowerless rosebush that had
clasped her in its branches awakened in me, because of her, agonizing
but delicious memories.




                           CHAPTER LXXVIII.



And again came radiant June. It was evening, the exquisite hour of
twilight. I was alone in my brother's study where I had been for some
time; the window was opened wide to a sky all golden and pink, and I
stood beside it and listened to the martins uttering their shrill
cries as they circled and darted above the old roofs.

No one knew that I was there, and never before had I felt so isolated
at the top of the house, nor more tempted by the unknown.

With a beating heart I opened a volume of De Musset's poems: his Don
Paez.

The first phrases were as musical and rhythmical as if sung by a
seductive golden-voiced siren:


  Black eyebrows, snow-white hands, and to indicate the tinyness
  Of her feet, I need only say she was an Andalusian countess.


That spring night when the darkness fell about me, when my eyes,
although never so close to the book, could no longer distinguish
anything of the enchanting verses save rows of little lines that
showed gray against the white of the page, I went out into the town
alone.

In the almost deserted streets, not yet lighted, the rows of linden
and acacia trees all abloom, deepened the shadows and perfumed the air
with their heavy fragrance. I pulled my felt hat over my eyes and,
like Don Paez, I strode along with a light supple step, and looked up
at balconies and indulged in I know not what little childish dreams of
Spanish twilights and Andalusian serenades.




                            CHAPTER LXXIX.



Vacation came again, and for the third time we took the journey to the
South, and there in the glorious August and September sunshine all
passed off in the same fashion as during preceding summers; the same
games with my loyal band, the expeditions to the vineyards and
mountains; in the ruins of Castelnau, the same brooding over mediaeval
times, and, in the sequestered woodland path where we had struck our
vein of silver, we still eagerly turned up the red soil, putting on
meantime the airs of bold adventurers,--the little Peyrals, however,
no longer believed in the mines.

These beginnings of summer, always so alike, deluded me into thinking
that in spite of my occasional fears my childhood would be
indefinitely prolonged; but I no longer felt "joy at waking;" a sort
of disquietude, such as oppresses one when he has left his duty
undone, weighed upon me more and more heavily each morning when I
thought that time was flying, that the vacation would soon be over,
and that I still lacked the courage to come to a decision in regard to
my future.




                            CHAPTER LXXX.



And one day, when September was more than half over, I realized,
because of the particularly torturing anxiety I felt when I waked,
that I must no longer defer the matter--the term which I had allotted
to myself was over.

In my heart of hearts I had more than half determined what my decision
was to be; but before it could be rendered effective it was necessary
for me to avow it, and I promised myself that the day should not pass
away without my having, as courageously as possible, accomplished that
task. It was my intention to first confide in my brother; for although
I feared that in the beginning he would oppose me with all his power,
I hoped that he would finally take my part and help me carry the day.

Therefore, after the mid-day dinner, when the sun was hottest, I
carried my pen and paper into my uncle's garden, and I locked myself
in there for the purpose of writing my letter. It was one of my
boyhood habits to study or write in the open air, and often I chose
the most singular places--tree-tops or the roof--for my work.

It was a hot and cloudless September afternoon. The old garden, silent
and melancholy as ever, gave me, strangely enough, more than the
customary feeling of regret that I was so far away from my mother,
that all of summer would pass without my seeing my home and the
flowers in the beloved little yard. And then, too, what I was upon the
point of writing would result in separating me farther from all that I
loved, and for that reason I felt extraordinarily sad. It seemed to me
that there was something a little funereal in the air of the garden,
as if the walls, the plum trees, the vine-covered bower, even the very
alfalfa fields beyond the garden, were vitally interested in this, the
first grave act of my life which was about to take place under their
eyes.

For the purpose of writing I hesitated between two or three places,
all blazing hot and almost shadeless. It was my way of gaining time,
an attempt to delay writing that letter which, with the ideas I then
had, would render my decision, once I had announced it, irrevocable.
The sun-baked earth was already strewn with red vine branches and
withered leaves; the holly-hocks and dahlias, grown tall as trees, had
a few meagre blossoms at the tops of their long stalks; the blazing
sun perfected and turned to gold the musk-scented grapes that always
ripened a little late; but in spite of the excessive heat and the
exquisite limpid blue of the sky one felt that summer was over.

I finally selected the arbor at the end of the garden for my purpose.
Its vines were stripped of their leaves, but the steel-blue
butterflies and the wasps still came and posted themselves upon the
tendrils of the grape-vines.

There in the calm and tranquil solitude, in the summer-like silence
filled with the musical chirp of insects, I wrote and timidly signed
my compact with the sea.

Of the letter itself I remember very little; but I recall distinctly
the emotion with which I enclosed it in its envelope--I felt as if I
had forever sealed my destiny.

After a few moments of deep reverie I wrote the address--my brother's
name and the name of a country in the far Orient where he then was--on
the envelope. There was now nothing more to do save to take it to the
village post-office; but I remained seated there in the arbor for a
long time in a dreamy mood. I leaned against the warm wall where the
lizards ran back and forth, and held upon my knees, with a feeling of
uncertainty and dismay, the little square of paper wherein I had
settled my future. Then I was seized with a longing to look towards
the horizon, to have a glimpse of the great spaces beyond the garden;
and I put my foot into the familiar breach in the wall by means of
which I often mounted, in order to watch the flight of elusive
butterflies, and, with the aid of my hands, I raised myself to the top
of the wall and leaned there propped up by my elbows. The same well-
known prospect greeted me: the hillsides covered with red vines, the
wooded mountains whose trees were rapidly being stripped of their
yellow leaves, and above, perched high, the noble reddish-brown ruin
of Castelnau. And in the nearer distance was Bories with its old
rounded porch white with lime-wash; and as I looked at it I seemed to
hear the plaintive refrain: "Ah! Ah! the good, good story!" sung in a
strange voice, and at the same time there appeared to me the vision of
the pinkish-yellow butterfly which two years before I had pricked with
a pin, and placed under glass in my little museum.

It drew near the hour for the ancient country diligence, that took the
letters away from the village, to depart, and I scrambled down from
the wall, and after locking the garden gate, I slowly directed my
steps towards the post-office.

Like one with eyes fixed upon a vision, I walked along without taking
notice of anything or any one. My spirit was wandering far away, in
the fern-carpeted forests of the delicious isle, along the sands of
gloomy Senegal where had lived the uncle who had interested himself in
my museum, and across the South Pacific Ocean where the dolphins were
passing.

The assured nearness and certainty of these things intoxicated me; for
the first time in my existence the world and life seemed to open
before me; my way was illuminated by a light altogether new to it: it
is true the light was a little mournful, a little sad, but it was
powerful nevertheless, and penetrated to the far distant horizon where
lie old age and death.

Many little childish images obtruded themselves from time to time into
my lofty dream; I saw myself in a sailor's uniform walking upon the
sun-blistered quays of tropical lands; and I prefigured my home-
comings, after perilous voyages, bringing with me cases filled to the
brim with wonderful things out of which cockroaches escaped as they
had done formerly in Jeanne's garden when her father's boxes were
unpacked.

But suddenly a pang went through my heart: those returns from distant
countries could not take place for many years--the faces welcoming me
home would be changed by time! Instantly I pictured those beloved
faces to myself; in a wan vision I saw them all together. Although its
members received me with smiles of joyous welcome, it was a sad group
to look upon, for wrinkles seamed every brow, and my mother had white
curls such as she has to-day. And my great aunt Bertha, already so
old, would she, too, be there? With a sort of uneasiness, I was
rapidly making a calculation of my aunt Bertha's age when I arrived at
the post-office.

I did not hesitate, however; with a hand that trembled only a little I
slipped my letter into the box, and the die was cast.




                            CHAPTER LXXXI.



I will end these reminiscences here, because what follows is not yet
distant enough from me to be submitted to the unknown reader. And
besides it seems to me that my childhood really came to an end upon
the day in which I announced my decision in regard to my future.

I was then fourteen and a half years of age, and that gave me,
therefore, three years and a half in which to prepare myself for the
naval academy, consequently I had time to do it thoroughly and
properly.

But in the meantime I had to encoutner many refusals and all sorts of
difficulties before my admittance to the Borda. And later I lived
through many troublous years; years replete with struggles and
mistakes,--I had many a Calvary to climb; I had to pay cruelly and in
full for having been reared a sensitive, shy little creature, by force
of will I had to recast and harden my physical as well as my moral
being. One day, when I was about twenty-seven years of age, a circus
director, after having seen my muscles that then had the elasticity
and strength of steel, gave utterance, in his admiration, to the
truest words I have ever had addressed to me: "What a pity, sir," he
said, "that your education commenced so late!"




                           CHAPTER LXXXII.



My sister and I had expected to visit the mountains again the next
summer.

But Azrael passed our way; terrible and unexpected misfortunes
disrupted our tranquil and happy family life.

And it was not until fifteen years later, after I had been over the
greater part of the earth, that I revisited this corner of France.

All was greatly changed there; my uncle and aunt slept in the
graveyard; my boy cousins had left, and my girl cousin, who already
had threads of silver among her dark locks, was preparing to quit this
part of the country forever, this empty house in which she did not
wish to live alone; and the Titi and the Marciette (whose names were
no longer prefaced by the article) had grown into tall young ladies
whom I would not have recognized.

Between two long voyages, in a hurry as always, my life hastening
feverishly upon its way, in remembrance of bygone days, I made this
pilgrimage to my uncle's house to see it once more, and for the last
time, before it was delivered into the hands of strangers.

It was in November, and the cold gray sky completely changed the
aspect of the country, which I had never seen before except under the
glorious summer sun.

After spending my only morning in revisiting a thousand places, my
melancholy ever augmented by the lowering winter clouds, I found that
I had forgotten the old garden and the vine-clad arbor in whose meagre
shade I had come to so momentous a decision, and I wished to run
there, at the last moment, before my carriage took me away from this
spot forever.

"You will have to go alone," said my cousin, who was busy packing her
trunks. She gave me the large key, the same large key that I carried
in the warm and radiant days of old when I went there, net in hand, to
catch the butterflies . . . oh! the summers of my childhood, how
marvellous and how enchanting they were!

For the last time of all, I entered the garden, which under the gray
sky appeared shrunken to me. I went first to the arbor, now leafless
and desolate, in which I had written the portentous letter to my
brother, and, by means of the same breach in the wall that had served
me in days gone by, I lifted myself to the coping to get a hasty
glimpse of the surrounding country, to bid it a last farewell. Bories
looked singularly near and small to me, it was almost unrecognizably
so, and the mountains beyond seemed diminished also, appeared no
higher than little hills. And all of these things that formerly I had
seen flooded with sunlight, now looked dull and sinister in the wan,
gray November light, and under the dark and wintry clouds. I felt as
if with the commencement of nature's autumn, my life's autumn had also
dawned.

And the world, the world which I had thought so immense and so full of
wonder and charm the day that I leaned on this same wall, after I had
made my decision,--the whole wide world, did it not look as faded and
shrunken to me now as this poor landscape?

And especially Bories, that under the autumnal sky looked like a
phantom of itself, filled me with the deepest sadness.

As I gazed at it I recalled the pinkish-yellow butterfly still under
its glass in my museum; it had remained there in the same spot, and
had preserved its fresh bright hues during the time that I had sailed
all round the globe. For many years I had not thought of the
association between the two things; but as soon as I remembered the
yellow butterfly, which was recalled to my mind by Bories, I heard a
small voice within me sing over and over, very softly: "Ah! Ah! the
good, good story!" . . . The little voice was strange and flute-like,
but above all it was sad, sad enough for tears, sad enough to sing
over the tomb where lie buried the vanished years and dead summers.




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