It was Mardi-Gras time. At sundown I had gone out with my father to see
the masqueraders who were in the streets; and having returned rather
early I went immediately to my attic-room to classify some shells. But
the noise of the revellers and the clashing of their tambourines
reached even to the retreat where I was occupying myself with scientific
matters, and the sounds awakened in me a feeling of inexpressible
sadness. It was the same emotion, greatly intensified, that I had when
I listened, of winter evenings, to the old cake vendor, and heard her
voice die away into those far-off squalid streets near the harbor. I
experienced an unexpected anguish very difficult to define in words. I
had a vague impression, which was the cause of my suffering, that I
was imprisoned; and for the moment, I thought that my liking for dry
classifications and nature study shut me away from the little boys of
every age who were in the streets below mingling with the sailors, more
childish than they, who tricked out in dreadful masks ran and frollicked
and sang coarse songs. It goes without saying that I had no desire to
be one of them; the very idea of jostling against them filled me with
distaste, and I disdained their rude sport. And I sincerely felt that
it was better for me to be where I was, occupied with putting the
many-colored family of the Purpura and the twenty-three varieties of the
Gastropoda in order.

But nevertheless the gay and merry people in the street troubled me
strangely. And, as was usual with me when I felt distressed, I went down
to look for my mother for the purpose of begging her to come up to keep
me company. Astonished at my request (for I scarcely ever asked any one
into my den), astonished especially by my anxious manner, she said with
an air of pleasantry that it was silly for a boy of ten to be afraid
to stay alone; but she consented to return with me, and when there
she seated herself close to me and occupied herself with a piece of