s four steps at a time. I mounted the
more rapidly because the stairway had already begun to fill with dread
shadows; and in the turnings and corners I saw the imaginary forms of
ghosts and monsters that at nightfall always pursued me as I ran up the
stairs.

My aunt Bertha's room, with its simple white muslin curtains, was as
modest as my grandmother's. The walls, covered with an old-fashioned
paper in vogue at the commencement of the century, were ornamented with
water colors similar to those in my grandmother's room. The picture that
I looked at most often was a pastel after Raphael of a virgin in white,
blue and rose color. The rays of the setting sun always fell upon this
picture (I have already said the hour of sunset was the time I preferred
most to be in this room). This virgin was very much like my aunt Bertha;
in spite of the great difference in their ages, one was struck with the
resemblance between the straight lines and regularity of their profiles.

On this same floor, but upon the street side, lived my other grandmother
(the one who always dressed in black) and her daughter, my aunt Claire,
the person in the house who petted me most.

Upon winter evenings, after I had been to my aunt Bertha's room to
see the sunset, it was my custom to go to them. I usually found them
together in my grandmother's room and I would seat myself near the fire
in a little chair placed there for me. But the twilight hour spent with
them was always a disturbing one. . . . After all the amusements, all
the day's running and playing, to sit in the dusk almost motionless
upon my tiny chair, with eyes wide open, uneasily watching for the least
change in the shadows, especially on that side of the room where the
door opened on the dim stairway, was very painful to me. . . . I am sure
that if my grandmother and aunt had known of the melancholy and terrors
which the twilight induced in me, they would have spared me by lighting
the lamp, but they did not know my sufferings; and it was the custom
of the aged persons by whom I was surrounded, to sit tranquilly at
nightfall in their accustomed places without having need for a lighted
lamp. As it grew darker one or the other, grandmother or aunt, would
draw her chair closer to me, and when I had that protection about me
I felt completely happy and reassured and would say: "Please tell me
stories about the Island."

The Island, that is the Island of Oleron, was my mother's native place,