diminished. There seemed to hang between me and the years to come a
great curtain whose heavy folds it was impossible for me to lift.




CHAPTER XXXIV.



In preceding chapters I have not said much about that Limoise which
was the scene of my initiation into nature and its wonders. My entire
childhood is intimately connected with that little corner of the world,
with its ancient forests of oak trees, and its rocky moorlands covered
here and there with a carpet of wild thyme and heather.

For ten or twelve glorious summers I went there to spend my Thursday
holidays, and I dreamed of it during the dreary intervening days of
study.

In May our friends the D-----s and Lucette went to their country home
and remained until vintage time, usually until after the first October
frost,--and regularly every Wednesday evening I was taken there.

Nothing in my estimation was so delightful as that journey to Limoise.
We scarcely ever went in a carriage, for it was not more than three and
a half miles distant; to me, however, it seemed very far, almost lost in
the woods. It lay toward the south, in the direction of those distant,
sunny lands I loved to think of. (I would have found it less charming
had it been towards the north.)