anguish of desolation, bereavement and exile. With downcast mien, and
with hair blown about by the wind, I turned and ran home. I was in the
extreme haste to be with my mother; I wished to embrace her and to cling
close to her; I desired to be with her so that she might console me
for the thousand indefinite, anticipated sorrows that surged through my
heart at the sight of those green waters, so vast and so deep.




CHAPTER V.



My mother!--I have already mentioned her two or three times in the
course of this recital, but without stopping to speak of her at
length. It seems that at first she was no more to me than a natural
and instinctive refuge where I ran for shelter from all terrifying and
unfamiliar things, from all the dark forebodings that had no real cause.

But I believe she took on reality and life for the first time in the
burst of ineffable tenderness which I felt when one May morning she
entered my room with a bouquet of pink hyacinths in her hand; she
brought in with her as she came a ray of sunlight.

I was convalescing from one of the maladies peculiar to
children,--measles or whooping cough, I know not which,--and I had been
ordered to remain in bed and to keep warm. By the rays of light that
filtered in through the closed shutters I divined the springtime warmth
and brightness of the sun and air, and I felt sad that I had to remain