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