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.