ordinarily sad. It seemed to me that there
was something a little funereal in the air of the garden, as if the
walls, the plum trees, the vine-covered bower, even the very alfalfa
fields beyond the garden, were vitally interested in this, the first
grave act of my life which was about to take place under their eyes.

For the purpose of writing I hesitated between two or three places,
all blazing hot and almost shadeless. It was my way of gaining time, an
attempt to delay writing that letter which, with the ideas I then had,
would render my decision, once I had announced it, irrevocable. The
sun-baked earth was already strewn with red vine branches and withered
leaves; the holly-hocks and dahlias, grown tall as trees, had a few
meagre blossoms at the tops of their long stalks; the blazing sun
perfected and turned to gold the musk-scented grapes that always ripened
a little late; but in spite of the excessive heat and the exquisite
limpid blue of the sky one felt that summer was over.

I finally selected the arbor at the end of the garden for my purpose.
Its vines were stripped of their leaves, but the steel-blue butterflies
and the wasps still came and posted themselves upon the tendrils of the
grape-vines.

There in the calm and tranquil solitude, in the summer-like silence
filled with the musical chirp of insects, I wrote and timidly signed my
compact with the sea.

Of the letter itself I remember very little; but I recall distinctly
the emotion with which I enclosed it in its envelope--I felt as if I had
forever sealed my destiny.

After a few moments of deep reverie I wrote the address--my brother's
name and the name of a country in the far Orient where he then was--on
the envelope. There was now nothing more to do save to take it to the
village post-office; but I remained seated there in the arbor for a long
time in a dreamy mood. I leaned against the warm wall where the
lizards ran back and forth, and held upon my knees, with a feeling of
uncertainty and dismay, the little square of paper wherein I had settled
my future. Then I was seized with a longing to look towards the horizon,
to have a glimpse of the great spaces beyond the garden; and I put my
foot into the familiar breach in the wall by means of which I often
mounted, in order to watch the flight of elusive butterflies, and, with
the aid of my hands, I raised myself to the top of the wall and leaned
there propped up by my elbows. The same well-known pr