limpid as crystal, was full of green and coloured rushes--the
surface being partly covered by the white and rose-tinted flowers of the
water-lilies, which reposing delicately on their large flat green
leaves, looked like velvet camellias placed upon a plate of sea-green
porcelain. In the mossy turf which bordered it, beds of violets, pink
daisies, and lilies of the valley, sent forth a cloud of perfume, and on
the large forest trees hung festoons and garlands of the honeysuckle and
the clematis; so that the _Mare_ and the surrounding foliage, would,
seen from above, have appeared like a large well with leafy walls, or an
immense emerald, which some spirit of the air, returning from a marriage
of the gods, had inadvertently dropped on his way home.

Having given a description of the lake, I must describe my picturesque
and sylvan hut. This, constructed of trunks of trees, branches and
osiers, was placed about twenty paces from the water, completely
concealed by the bushes that encircled it; the inside was fitted up in
rustic taste with seats of wood, the whole carpeted with turf, and the
entrance planted with every kind of odoriferous flower.

This _Mare_, approached by marks known only to myself, became
thenceforward the source of all my pleasures. At that period very young,
and equally careless, I would not have parted with my large liquid
_tazza_, my little lake, my leafy castle, for all the vulgar comfortable
_chateaux_ in the neighbourhood.

If I have lingered too much over this subject, the reader must forgive
me for elaborating this picture--this portrait I may call it of my
_Mare_. He has before him a type of all the others, and this again must
be my excuse, it is so dear to the unfortunate to stir the still warm
embers of by-gone memories,--so dear to rouse from their slumbers the
treasured recollections of early days,--to wake those sweet spirits of
the mind, those phantoms robed in azure blue, and decked with the
pearls, the joys which never can glide again across the dreamer's
path--the joys of youth.

Oh _souvenirs_ of childhood!--of happy hours so quickly gone,--bright
visions that gild, yes, light the darkest clouds of after years,
blessed, blessed are ye! Alone, friendless, far from those I love, with
the heart steeped, drowned in sorrow, a sombre sky before my eyes,
wintry clouds, that distil but melancholy thoughts all around me,--well,
I, the poor sparrow, who has been cast from his nest by the rag