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pubOne.info thank you for your continued support and wish to present you this new edition. There is to-day a widely spread new interest in child life, a desire to get nearer to children and understand them. To be sure child study is not new; every wise parent and every sympathetic teacher has ever been a student of children; but there is now an effort to do more consciously and systematically what has always been done in some way.
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LiteraturaSubtopic
ClásicosCHAPTER I.
It is with some degree of awe that I touch upon the
enigma of my impressions at the commencement of my life. I am
almost doubtful whether they had reality within my own experience,
or whether they are not, rather, recollections mysteriously
transmitted - I feel an almost sacred hesitation when I would
fathom their depths.
I came forth from the darkness of unconsciousness
very gradually, for my mind was illumined only fitfully, but then
by outbursts of splendor that compelled and fascinated my infant
gaze. When the light was extinguished, I lapsed once more into the
non-consciousness of the new-born animal, of the tiny plant just
germinating.
The history of my earliest years is that of a child
much indulged and petted to whom nothing of moment happened; and
into whose narrow, protected life no jarring came that was not
foreseen, and the shock of which was not deadened with solicitous
care. In my manners I was always very tractable and submissive.
That I may not make my recital tedious, I will note without
continuity and without the proper transitions those moments which
are impressed upon my mind because of their strangeness, those
moments that are still so vividly remembered, although I have
forgotten many poignant sorrows, many lands, adventures, and
places.
I was at that time like a fledgling swallow living
high up in a niche in the eaves, who from time to time peeps out
over the top of its nest with its little bright eyes. With the eyes
of imagination it sees into the deeps of space, although to the
actual vision only a courtyard and street are visible; and it sees
into depths which it will presently need to journey through. It was
during such moments of clairvoyance that I had a vision of the
infinity of which before my present life I was a part. Then, in
spite of myself, my consciousness flagged, and for days together I
lived the tranquil, subconscious life of early childhood.
At first my mind, altogether unimpressed and
undeveloped, may be compared to a photographer's apparatus fitted
with its sensitized glass. Objects insufficiently lighted up make
no impression upon the virgin plates; but when a vivid splendor
falls upon them, and when they are encircled by disks of light,
these once dim objects now engrave themselves upon the glass. My
first recollections are of bright summer days and sparkling noon
times, - or more truly, are recollections of the light of wood
fires burning with great ruddy flames.
CHAPTER II.
As if it were yesterday I recall the evening when I
suddenly discovered that I could run and jump; and I remember that
I was intoxicated by the delicious sensation almost to the point of
falling.
This must have been at about the commencement of my
second winter. At the sad hour of twilight I was in the dining-room
of my parents' house, which room had always seemed a very vast one
to me. At first, I was quiet, made so, no doubt, by the influence
of the environing darkness, for the lamp was not yet lighted. But
as the hour for dinner approached, a maid-servant came in and threw
an armful of small wood into the fireplace to reanimate the dying
fire. Immediately there was a beautiful bright light, and the
leaping flames illuminated everything, and waves of light spread to
the far part of the room where I sat. The flames danced and leaped
with a twining motion ever higher and higher and more gayly, and
the tremulous shadows along the wall ran to their hiding-places -
oh! how quickly I arose overwhelmed with admiration for I recollect
that I had been sitting at the feet of my great-aunt Bertha (at
that time already very old) who half dozed in her chair. We were
near a window through which the gray night filtered; I was seated
upon one of those high, old-fashioned foot- stools with two steps,
so convenient for little children who can from that vantage ground
put their heads in grandmother's or grand-aunt's lap, and wheedle
so effectually.
I arose in ecstasy, and approached the flames; then
in the circle of light which lay upon the carpet I began to walk
around and around and to turn. Ever faster and faster I went, until
suddenly I felt an unwonted elasticity run through my limbs, and in
a twinkling I invented a new and amusing style of motion; it was to
push my feet very hard against the floor, and then to lift them up
together suddenly for a half second. When I fell, up I sprang and
recommenced my play. Bang! Bang! With every increasing noise I went
against the floor, and at last I began to feel a singular but
agreeable giddiness in my head. I knew how to jump! I knew how to
run!
I am convinced that that is my earliest distinct
recollection of great joyousness.
"Dear me! What is the matter with the child this
evening?" asked my great-aunt Bertha, with some anxiety. And I hear
again the unexpected sound of her voice.
But I still kept on jumping. Like those tiny foolish
moths which of an evening revolve about the light of a lamp, I went
around in the luminous circle which widened and retracted, ever
taking form from the wavering light of the flames. And I remember
all of this so vividly that my eyes can still see the smallest
details of the texture of the carpet which was the scene of the
event. It was of durable stuff called home-spun, woven in the
country by native weavers. (Our house was still furnished as it had
been in my maternal grandmother's time, as she had arranged it
after she had quitted the Island, and come to the mainland. - A
little later I will speak of this Island which had already a
mysterious attraction for my youthful imagination. - It was a
simple country house, notable for its Huguenot austerity; and it
was a home where immaculate cleanliness and extreme order were the
sole luxuries.)
In the circle of light, which grew ever more and
more narrow, I still jumped; but as I did so I had thoughts that
were of an intensity not habitual with me. At the same time that my
tiny limbs discovered their power, my spirit also knew itself; a
burst of light overspread my mind where dawning ideas still showed
forth feebly. And it is without doubt to the inner awakening that
this fleeting moment of my life owes its existence, owes
undoubtedly its permanency in memory. But vainly I seek for the
words, that seem ever to escape me, through which to express my
elusive emotions. . . . Here in the dining-room I look about and
see the chairs standing the length of the wall, and I am reminded
of the aged grandmother, grand-aunts and aunts who always come at a
certain hour and seat themselves in them. Why are they not here
now? At this moment I would like to feel their protecting presence
about me. Probably they are upstairs in their rooms on the second
floor; between them and me there is the dim stairway, the stairway
that I people with shadowy beings the thought of which makes me
tremble. . . . And my mother? I would wish most especially for her,
but I know that she has gone out, gone out into the long streets
which in my imagination have no end. I had myself gone to the door
with her and had asked her: "When returnest thou?" And she had
promised me that she would return speedily. Later they told me that
when I was a child I would never permit any members of the family
to leave the house to go walking or visiting without first
obtaining their assurance of a speedy homecoming. "You will come
back soon?" I would say, and I always asked the question anxiously,
as I followed them to the door.
My mother had departed, and it gave my heart a
feeling of heaviness to know that she was out. Out in the streets!
I was content not to be there where it was cold and dark, where
little children so easily lost their way, - how snug it was to be
within doors before the fire that warmed me through and through;
how nice it was to be at home! I had never realized it until this
evening - doubtless it was my first distinct feeling of attachment
to hearth and home, and I was sadly troubled at the thought of the
immense, strange world lying beyond the door. It was then that I
had, for the first time, a conscious affection for my aged aunts
and grand-aunts, who cared for me in infancy, whom I longed to have
seated around me at this dim, sad, twilight hour.
In the meantime the once bright and playful flames
had died down, the armful of wood was consumed, and as the lamp was
not lighted, the room was quite dark. I had already stumbled upon
the home-spun carpet, but as I had not hurt myself, I recommenced
my amusing play. For an instant I thought to experience a new but
strange joy by going into the shadowy and distant recesses of the
room; but I was overtaken there by an indefinable terror of
something which I cannot name, and I hastily took refuge in the dim
circle of light and looked behind me with a shudder to see whether
anything had followed me from out of those dark corners. Finally
the flames died away entirely, and I was really afraid; aunt Bertha
sat motionless upon her chair, and although I felt that her eyes
were upon me I was not reassured. The very chairs, the chairs
ranged about the room, began to disquiet me because their long
shadows, that stretched behind them exaggerating the height of
ceiling and length of wall, moved restlessly like souls in the
agonies of death. And especially there was a half-open door that
led into a very dark hall, which in its turn opened into a large
empty parlor absolutely dark. Oh! with what intensity I fixed my
eyes upon that door to which I would not for the world have turned
my back!
This was the beginning of those daily winter-evening
terrors which in that beloved home cast such a gloom over my
childhood.
What I feared to see enter that door had no well
defined form, but the fear was none the less definite to me: and it
kept me standing motionless near the dead fire with wide open eyes
and fluttering heart. When my mother suddenly entered the room by a
different door, oh! how I clung to her and covered my face with her
dress: it was a supreme protection, the sanctuary where no harm
could reach me, the harbor of harbors where the storm is forgotten.
. . .
At this instant the thread of recollection breaks, I
can follow it no farther.
CHAPTER III.
After the ineffaceable impression left by that first
fright and that first dance before the winter fire many months
passed during which no other events were engraven upon my memory,
and I relapsed into a twilight state similar to that at the
commencement of my life. But the mental dimness was pierced now and
again with a bright light; as the gray of early morning is tinged
by the rose-color of dawning.
I believe that the impressions which succeeded were
those of the summer time, of the great sun and nature. I recall
feeling an almost delicious terror when one day I found myself
alone in the midst of tall June grasses that grew high as my head.
But here the secret working of self consciousness is almost too
entangled with the things of the past for me to explain it.
We were visiting at a country place called Limoise,
a place that at later time played a great part in my life. It
belonged to neighbors and friends, the D - - s, whose house in town
was directly next to ours. Perhaps I had visited Limoise the
preceding summer, but at that time I was very like a cocoon before
it has crawled from its silken wrapping. The day that I now refer
to is the one in which I was able to reflect for the first time, in
which I first knew the sweetness of reverie.
I have forgotten our departure, the carriage ride
and our arrival. But I remember distinctly that late one hot
afternoon, as the sun was setting, I found myself alone in a remote
part of a deserted garden. The gray walls overgrown with ivy and
mosses separated its grove of trees from the moorland and the rocky
country round about it. For me, brought up in the city, the old and
solitary garden, where even the fruit trees were dying from old
age, had all the mystery and charm of a primeval forest. I crossed
a border of box, and I was in the midst of a large uncultivated
tract filled with climbing asparagus and great weeds. Then I
cowered down, as is the fashion of little children, that I might be
more effectually hidden by what hid me sufficiently already, and I
remained there motionless with eyes dilated and with quickening
spirit, half afraid, half enraptured. The feeling that I
experienced in the presence of these unfamiliar things was one of
reflection rather than of astonishment. I knew that the bright
green vegetation closing in about me was every where in no less
measure than in the heart of this forest, and emotions, sad and
weird and vague took possession of me and affrighted but fascinated
me. That I might remain hidden as long as possible I crouched lower
and still lower, and I felt the joy a little Indian boy feels when
he is in his beloved forest.
Suddenly I heard someone call: "Pierre! Pierre! Dear
Pierre!" I did not reply, but instead lay as close as possible to
the ground, and sought to hide under the weeds and the waving
branches of the asparagus.
Still I heard: "Pierre, Pierre." It was Lucette; I
knew her voice, and from the mockery of her tone I felt sure that
she had spied me. But I could not see her although I looked about
me very carefully: no one was visible!
With peals of laughter she continued to call, and
her voice grew merrier and merrier. Where can she be? thought
I.
Ah! At last I spied her perched upon the twisted
branch of a tree that was overhung with gray moss!
I was fairly caught and I came out of my green
hiding place.
As I rose I gazed over the wild and flowering
things, and saw the corner of the old moss-grown wall that enclosed
the garden. That wall was destined to be at a later time a very
familiar haunt of mine, for on the Thursday holidays during my
college life I spent many a happy hour sitting upon it
contemplating the peaceful and quiet country, and there I mused, to
the chirping accompaniment of the crickets, of those distant
countries fairer and sunnier than my own. And upon that summer day
those gray and crumbling stones, defaced by the sun and weather,
and overgrown with mosses, gave me for the first time an
indefinable impression of the persistence of things; a vague
conception of existences antedating my own, in times long past.
Lucette D - - , my elder by eight or ten years,
seemed to me already a grown person. I cannot recall the time when
I did not know her. Later I came to love her as a sister, and her
early death in her prime was one of the first real griefs of my
boyhood.
And the first recollection I have of her is as I saw
her in the branches of the old pear tree. Her image doubtless
begets a vividness from the two new emotions with which it is
blended: the enchanting uneasiness I felt at the invasion of green
nature and the melancholy reverie that took possession of me as I
contemplated the old wall, type of ancient things and olden
times.
CHAPTER IV.
I will now endeavor to explain the impression that
the sea made upon me at our first brief and melancholy encounter,
which took place at twilight upon the evening of my arrival at the
Island.
Notwithstanding the fact that I could scarcely see
it, it had so remarkable an effect on me that in a single moment it
was engraven upon my memory forever. I feel a retrospective shudder
run through me when my spirit broods upon the recollection.
We had but newly arrived at this village near St.
Ongeoise where my parents had rented a fisherman's house for the
bathing season. I knew that we had come here for something called
the sea, but I had had no glimpse of it (a line of dunes hid it
from me because of my short stature), and I was extremely impatient
to become acquainted with it; therefore after dinner, as night was
falling, I went alone to seek this mysterious thing.
The air was sharp and biting, and unlike any I had
experienced, and from behind the hillocks of sand, along which the
path led, there came a faint but majestic noise. Everything
affrighted me, the unfamiliar way, the twilight falling from the
overcast sky, and the loneliness of this part of the village. But
inspired by one of those great and sudden resolutions, that come
sometimes to the most timid, I went forward with a firm step.
Suddenly I stopped overcome and almost paralyzed by
fear, for something took shape before me, something dark and
surging sprang up from all sides at the same time and it seemed to
stretch out endlessly. It was something so vast and full of motion
that I was seized with a deadly vertigo - it was the sea of my
imagining! Without a moment's hesitation, without asking how this
knowledge had been wrought, without astonishment even, I recognized
it and I trembled with a great emotion. It was so dark a green as
to be almost black; to me it seemed unstable, perfidious, all
ingulfing, always turbulent, and of a sinister, menacing aspect.
Above it, in harmony with it, stretched the gray and lowering
sky.
And far away, very far away, upon the immeasurable
distant horizon I perceived a break between the sky and the waters,
and a pale yellow light showed through this cleft.
Had I been to the sea before to recognize it thus
quickly? Perhaps I had, but without being conscious of it, for when
I was about five or six months old I had been brought to the Island
by my great aunt, my grandmother's sister; or perhaps because it
had played so great a part in my sea-faring ancestors' lives I was
born with a nascent conception of it and its immensity.
We communed together a moment, one with the other -
I was deeply fascinated. At our first encounter I am sure I had a
nebulous presentiment that I would one day go to it in spite of my
hesitation, in spite of all the efforts put forth to hold me back,
- and the emotion that overwhelmed me in the presence of the sea
was not only one of fear, but I felt also an inexpressible sadness,
and I seemed to feel the anguish of desolation, bereavement and
exile. With downcast mien, and with hair blown about by the wind, I
turned and ran home. I was in the extreme haste to be with my
mother; I wished to embrace her and to cling close to her; I
desired to be with her so that she might console me for the
thousand indefinite, anticipated sorrows that surged through my
heart at the sight of those green waters, so vast and so deep.
CHAPTER V.
My mother! - I have already mentioned her two or three times in the course of this recital, but without stopping to speak of her at length. It seems that at first she was no more to me than a natural and instinctive refuge where I ran for shelter from all terrifying and unfamiliar things, from all the dark forebodings that had no real cause.
But I believe she took on reality and life for the first time in the burst of ineffable tenderness which I felt when one May morning she entered my room with a bouquet of pink hyacinths in her hand; she brought in with her as she came a ray of sunlight.
I was convalescing from one of the maladies peculiar to children, - measles or whooping cough, I know not which, - and I had been ordered to remain in bed and to keep warm. By the rays of light that filtered in through the closed shutters I divined the springtime warmth and brightness of the sun and air, and I felt sad that I had to remain behind the curtains of my tiny white bed; I wished to rise and go out; but most of all I had a desire to see my mother.
The door opened and she entered, smiling. Ah, I remembe...
Table of contents
- PREFACE
- CHAPTER I.
- CHAPTER II.
- CHAPTER III.
- CHAPTER IV.
- CHAPTER V.
- CHAPTER VI.
- CHAPTER VII.
- CHAPTER VIII.
- CHAPTER IX.
- CHAPTER X.
- CHAPTER XI.
- CHAPTER XII.
- CHAPTER XIII.
- CHAPTER XIV.
- CHAPTER XV.
- CHAPTER XVI.
- CHAPTER XVII.
- CHAPTER XVIII.
- CHAPTER XIX.
- CHAPTER XX.
- CHAPTER XXI.
- CHAPTER XXII.
- CHAPTER XXIII.
- CHAPTER XXIV.
- CHAPTER XXV.
- CHAPTER XXVI.
- CHAPTER XXVII.
- CHAPTER XXVIII.
- CHAPTER XXIX.
- CHAPTER XXX.
- CHAPTER XXXI.
- CHAPTER XXXII.
- CHAPTER XXXIII.
- CHAPTER XXXIV.
- CHAPTER XXXV.
- CHAPTER XXXVI.
- CHAPTER XXXVII.
- CHAPTER XXXVIII.
- CHAPTER XXXIX.
- CHAPTER XL.
- CHAPTER XLI.
- CHAPTER XLII.
- CHAPTER XLIII.
- CHAPTER XLIV.
- CHAPTER XLV.
- CHAPTER XLVI.
- CHAPTER XLVII.
- CHAPTER XLVIII.
- CHAPTER XLIX.
- CHAPTER L.
- CHAPTER LI.
- CHAPTER LII.
- CHAPTER LIII.
- CHAPTER LIV.
- CHAPTER LV.
- CHAPTER LVI.
- CHAPTER LVII.
- CHAPTER LVIII.
- CHAPTER LIX.
- CHAPTER LX.
- CHAPTER LXI.
- CHAPTER LXII.
- CHAPTER LXIII.
- CHAPTER LXXIV.
- CHAPTER LXV.
- CHAPTER LXVI.
- CHAPTER LXVII.
- CHAPTER LXVIII.
- CHAPTER LXIX.
- CHAPTER LXX.
- CHAPTER LXXI.
- CHAPTER LXXII.
- CHAPTER LXXIII.
- CHAPTER LXXIV.
- CHAPTER LXXVI.
- CHAPTER LXXVII.
- CHAPTER LXXVIII.
- CHAPTER LXXIX.
- CHAPTER LXXX.
- CHAPTER LXXXI.
- CHAPTER LXXXII.
- Copyright