to
make the acquaintance of these tiny creatures that are peculiar to ships
and to warm countries.

CHAPTER LX.

Spring! Spring!

The white roses and the jasmine bloomed on our old garden wall, and the
deliciously fragrant honeysuckle hung its long garlands over it.

I began to live there from morning until night in closest intimacy with
the plants and the old stones. I listened to the sound of the water as
it plashed in the shade of the majestic plum tree, I studied the grasses
and the wood mosses that grew at the edge of my little lake; and upon
the warm side of the garden where the sun shone all through the day, the
cactus put out its buds.

My Wednesday evening trips to Limoise commenced again,--and it goes
without saying that I dreamed of the beloved place from one week to the
next to the detriment of my lessons and my other duties.

CHAPTER LXI.

I believe that that spring was the most radiant and the most ravishingly
happy one of my childhood, in contrast no doubt to the terrible winter
spent under the rigorous care of the Great Ape.

Oh! the end of May, the high grass and then the June mowing! In what a
glory of golden light I see it all again!

I took evening walks with my father and sister as I had done during
my earlier years; they now came to meet me at the close of school,
at half-past four, and we set out immediately for the fields. Our
preference that spring was for a certain meadow abloom with pink
amourettes, and I always brought home great bouquets of these flowers.

In that same meadow a migratory and ephemeral species of moth, black
and pink (of the same pink as the amourettes) had hatched out, and they
slept poised on the long stalks of the grass, or flew away as lightly as
the flowers shed their petals when we walked through the hay. . . . And
all of these things appear to me again as I saw them in the exquisite,
limpid June atmosphere. . . . During the afternoon classes, the thought
of the sun-dappled meadows made me more restless than did even the mild
air and the spring odors that came in through the open windows.

I cherish particularly the remembrance of an evening in which my mother
had promised, as a special favor, to join us in our walk to the fields
of pink amourettes. That afternoon I had been more inattentive than
usual, and the Great Ape had threatened to keep me in, and all during
my lessons I firmly believed that I was to be punished. This keeping
in