generous natures must wage in their own souls at least
once--perhaps many times--in their lives. Memory, in such
moments, plays like an electric storm;--all involuntarily he
found himself reviewing his life.

Incidents long forgotten came back with singular vividness: he
saw the Past as he had not seen it while it was the
Present;--remembrances of home, recollections of infancy,
recurred to him with terrible intensity,--the artless pleasures
and the trifling griefs, the little hurts and the tender
pettings, the hopes and the anxieties of those who loved him, the
smiles and tears of slaves ... And his first Creole pony, a
present from his father the day after he had proved himself able
to recite his prayers correctly in French, without one
mispronunciation--without saying crasse for grace,--and yellow
Michel, who taught him to swim and to fish and to paddle a
pirogue;--and the bayou, with its wonder-world of turtles and
birds and creeping things;--and his German tutor, who could not
pronounce the j;--and the songs of the cane-fields,--strangely
pleasing, full of quaverings and long plaintive notes, like the
call of the cranes ... Tou', tou' pays blanc! ... Afterward
Camaniere had leased the place;--everything must have been
changed; even the songs could not be the same. Tou', tou' pays
blare!--Danie qui commande ...

And then Paris; and the university, with its wild
under-life,--some debts, some follies; and the frequent fond
letters from home to which he might have replied so much
oftener;--Paris, where talent is mediocrity; Paris, with its
thunders and its splendors and its seething of passion;--Paris,