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.