Bertha.

From her windows, across the houses and the walls covered with roses and
jasmine, one could see the ramparts of the town. They were so near to
us that their old trees were visible; and beyond them lay those great
plains of our country called prees (prairies) all so alike, and as
monotonous as the neighboring seas. From the window one also saw the
river. At full tide, when it almost overflowed its banks, it looked,
as it wound along through the green meadows, like silver lace; and the
large and small boats that passed in the far distance mounted upon this
silver thread toward the harbor and from there sailed out into the great
sea.

As this was our only glimpse of real country the windows in my aunt
Bertha's room had always a great attraction for me. Especially had
they in the evening at sunset, for from them I could watch the sun sink
mysteriously behind the prairies. Oh! those sunsets that I saw from
my aunt Bertha's windows, what ecstasy overcast with melancholy they
awakened in me! The winter sunsets seen through the closed windows were
a pale rose color. Those of summer time, upon stormy evenings, after a
hot, bright day, I contemplated from the open window, and as I did so
I would breathe in the sweet odors given out by the jasmine blossoms
growing on the wall: it seems to me that there are no such sunsets now
as there were then. When the sunsets were notably splendid and unusual,
if I was not in the room, aunt Bertha, who never missed one, would call
out hastily: "Dearie! Dearie! Come quickly!" From any corner of the
house I heard that call and understood it, and I went swift as a
hurricane and mounted the stairs four steps at a time. I mounted the
more rapidly because the stairway had already begun to fill with dread
shadows; and in the turnings and corners I saw the imaginary forms of