as shady as a verdant grotto, was the spot I had chosen for the more
exacting and laborious work of Latin versification. As this time I was
scolded by Lucette's mother for my great carelessness, we decided to go
immediately and rescue the book.

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

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

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

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