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



CHAPTER LXX.



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

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

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

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

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



CHAPTER LXXI.



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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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



CHAPTER LXXII.



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

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

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

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



CHAPTER LXXIII.



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

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



CHAPTER LXXIV.



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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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



CHAPTER LXXVI.



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

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

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

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



CHAPTER LXXVII.



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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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



CHAPTER LXXVIII.



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

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

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

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

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

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

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



CHAPTER LXXIX.



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

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



CHAPTER LXXX.



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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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



CHAPTER LXXXI.



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

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

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



CHAPTER LXXXII.



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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

THE END