of undulating grass at their feet are laid low, tossed about in every
direction. There, I suddenly have brought back to my mind, my first
impression of a strong wind in the woods of Limoise, in the province
of Saintonge, some twenty-eight years ago, in a month of March of my
childhood.

That, the first storm of wind my eyes ever beheld sweeping over the
landscape, blew in just the opposite quarter of the world,--and many
years have rapidly passed over that memory,--since then the best part
of my life has been spent.

I refer too often, I fancy, to my childhood; I am foolishly fond of
it. But it seems to me that then only did I truly experience
sensations or impressions; the smallest trifles I then saw or heard
were full of deep and hidden meaning, recalling past images out of
oblivion, and reawakening memories of prior existence; or else they
were presentiments of existences to come, future incarnations in the
land of dreams, expectations of wondrous marvels that life and the
world held in store for me,--for later, no doubt, when I should be
grown up. Well, I have grown up, and have found nothing that answered
to my undefinable expectations; on the contrary, all has narrowed and
darkened around me, my vague recollections of the past have become
blurred, the horizons before me have slowly closed in and become full
of a gray darkness. Soon will my time come to return to eternal rest,
and I shall leave this world without having understood the mysterious
wherefore of these mirages of my childhood; I shall bear away with me
a lingering regret, of I know not what lost home that I have failed to
find, of the unknown beings ardently longed for, whom, alas, I have
never embraced.