one in the garden
(for I was afraid to walk down the dark avenues by myself), I would
repair to my solitary sleeping-place on the verandah--a proceeding
which, despite the countless mosquitos which always devoured me,
afforded me the greatest pleasure. If the moon was full, I frequently
spent whole nights sitting up on my mattress, looking at the light and
shade, listening to the sounds or stillness, dreaming of one matter
and another (but more particularly of the poetic, voluptuous happiness
which, in those days, I believed was to prove the acme of my felicity)
and lamenting that until now it had only been given to me to IMAGINE
things. No sooner had every one dispersed, and I had seen lights pass
from the drawing-room to the upper chambers (whence female voices would
presently be heard, and the noise of windows opening and shutting), than
I would depart to the verandah, and walk up and down there as I listened
attentively to the sounds from the slumbering mansion. To this day,
whenever I feel any expectation (no matter how small and baseless) of
realising a fraction of some happiness of which I may be dreaming, I
somehow invariably fail to picture to myself what the imagined happiness
is going to be like.

At the least sound of bare footsteps, or of a cough, or of a snore, or
of the rattling of a window, or of the rustling of a dress, I would
leap from my mattress, and stand furtively gazing and listening, thrown,
without any visible cause, into extreme agitation. But the lights would
disappear from the upper rooms, the sounds of footsteps and talking give
place to snores, the watchman begin his nightly tapping with his stick,
the garden grow brighter and more mysterious as the streaks of light
vanished from the windows, the last candle pass from the pantry to the
hall (throwing a glimmer into the dewy garden as it did so), and the
stooping figure of Foka (decked in a nightcap, and carrying the candle)
become visible to my eyes as he went to his bed. Often I would find
a great and fearful pleasure in stealing over the grass, in the black
shadow of the house, until I had reached the hall window, where I would
stand listening with bated breath to the snoring of the boy, to Foka's
gruntings (in the belief that no one heard him), and to the sound of his
senile voice as he drawled out the evening prayers. At length even his
candle would be extinguished, and the window slammed down, so that I
would find myself utterly alone