after the ineffaceable impression left by that first fright and that first dance before the winter fire many months passed during which no other events were engraven upon my memory, and i relapsed into a twilight state similar to that at the commencement of my life. but the mental dimness was pierced now and again with a bright light; as the gray of early morning is tinged by the rose-color of dawning.
i believe that the impressions which succeeded were those of the summer time, of the great sun and nature. i recall feeling an almost delicious terror when one day i found myself alone in the midst of tall june grasses that grew high as my head. but here the secret working of self consciousness is almost too entangled with the things of the past for me to explain it.
we were visiting at a country place called limoise, a place that at later time played a great part in my life. it belonged to neighbors and friends, the d——s, whose house in town was directly next to ours. perhaps i had visited limoise the preceding summer, but at that time i was very like a cocoon before it has crawled from its silken wrapping. the day that i now refer to is the one in which i was able to reflect for the first time, in which i first knew the sweetness of reverie.
i have forgotten our departure, the carriage ride and our arrival. but i remember distinctly that late one hot afternoon, as the sun was setting, i found myself alone in a remote part of a deserted garden. the gray walls overgrown with ivy and mosses separated its grove of trees from the moorland and the rocky country round about it. for me, brought up in the city, the old and solitary garden, where even the fruit trees were dying from old age, had all the mystery and charm of a primeval forest. i crossed a border of box, and i was in the midst of a large uncultivated tract filled with climbing asparagus and great weeds. then i cowered down, as is the fashion of little children, that i might be more effectually hidden by what hid me sufficiently already, and i remained there motionless with eyes dilated and with quickening spirit, half afraid, half enraptured. the feeling that i experienced in the presence of these unfamiliar things was one of reflection rather than of astonishment. i knew that the bright green vegetation closing in about me was every where in no less measure than in the heart of this forest, and emotions, sad and weird and vague took possession of me and affrighted but fascinated me. that i might remain hidden as long as possible i crouched lower and still lower, and i felt the joy a little indian boy feels when he is in his beloved forest.
suddenly i heard someone call: “pierre! pierre! dear pierre!” i did not reply, but instead lay as close as possible to the ground, and sought to hide under the weeds and the waving branches of the asparagus.
still i heard: “pierre, pierre.” it was lucette; i knew her voice, and from the mockery of her tone i felt sure that she had spied me. but i could not see her although i looked about me very carefully: no one was visible!
with peals of laughter she continued to call, and her voice grew merrier and merrier. where can she be? thought i.
ah! at last i spied her perched upon the twisted branch of a tree that was overhung with gray moss!
i was fairly caught and i came out of my green hiding place.
as i rose i gazed over the wild and flowering things, and saw the corner of the old moss-grown wall that enclosed the garden. that wall was destined to be at a later time a very familiar haunt of mine, for on the thursday holidays during my college life i spent many a happy hour sitting upon it contemplating the peaceful and quiet country, and there i mused, to the chirping accompaniment of the crickets, of those distant countries fairer and sunnier than my own. and upon that summer day those gray and crumbling stones, defaced by the sun and weather, and overgrown with mosses, gave me for the first time an indefinable impression of the persistence of things; a vague conception of existences antedating my own, in times long past.
lucette d——, my elder by eight or ten years, seemed to me already a grown person. i cannot recall the time when i did not know her. later i came to love her as a sister, and her early death in her prime was one of the first real griefs of my boyhood.
and the first recollection i have of her is as i saw her in the branches of the old pear tree. her image doubtless begets a vividness from the two new emotions with which it is blended: the enchanting uneasiness i felt at the invasion of green nature and the melancholy reverie that took possession of me as i contemplated the old wall, type of ancient things and olden times.
