of the aged persons by whom I was surrounded, to sit tranquilly at
nightfall in their accustomed places without having need for a lighted
lamp. As it grew darker one or the other, grandmother or aunt, would
draw her chair closer to me, and when I had that protection about me
I felt completely happy and reassured and would say: "Please tell me
stories about the Island."

The Island, that is the Island of Oleron, was my mother's native place,
my grandmother's and aunt's also, which they had quitted twenty years
before my birth to establish themselves upon the main land. The Island,
or the least thing that came from it, had a singular charm for me.

It was quite near us, for from a garret window at the top of the house
we could, upon a very clear day, see the extreme end of its extensive
plain; it appeared a little bluish line against a still paler one which
was the arm of the ocean separating us from it. . . . To get to it we
had to take a long journey in wretched country wagons and in sailing
boats; and often our boat had to make its way there in the teeth of
a strong gale. At this time in the village of St. Pierre Oleron I had
three old aunts who lived very modestly upon the revenues of their salt
marshes (the remains of a once great inheritance), and their annual
rents which the peasants still paid with sacks of wheat. . . . When I
went to visit them at St. Pierre there was for me a certain joy, mingled
with many kinds of conflicting emotions, which I cannot explain, in
trying to picture to myself their once great station.

The Huguenot austerity of their manners, their mode of life, their house
and their furniture all belonged to a past time, to a bygone generation.
The sea surrounded and isolated us, and the wind constantly swept over
the moorland and over the great stretches of sandy beach.