The Story of a Child

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 experien...

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...

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 mem...

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...

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...

Before I finish writing of the confused memories I have of the commencement of my life I wish to speak of another ray of sunshine--a sad ray this time,--that has left an ineffac...

I was old enough at any rate to take walks with my father and my sister, and I went out with them this dewy morning. I was in ecstasy to see that everything had become so green,...

Someone has advanced the theory that those persons endowed with a gift for painting (either with color or with words) probably belong to a half-blind species; accustomed to livi...

In the month of March, as the shadows of twilight gathered, two little children were seated very close together upon a low footstool--two little ones, between the ages of five a...

Upon the second floor, above the room occupied by my poor old grandmother, who sang the Marseillaise so constantly, in that part of the house overlooking the yard and the garden...

Gaspard was a little crop-eared dog who was saved from absolute homeliness by the vivacious and kindly expression of his eyes. I do not now recall how he came to domesticate him...

I wish now to speak of the anguish caused by a story that was read to me. (I seldom read for myself, and in fact I disliked books very much.)

“And at midnight there was a cry made: Behold, the Bridegroom cometh; go ye out to meet him. . . . And they that were ready went in with him to the marriage; and the door was sh...

“Once upon a time a little girl when she opened a large fruit that had come from the colonies, a big creature came out of it, a green creature, and it bit her and that made her...

We pretended to be two caterpillars, and we would creep along the ground upon our stomachs and our knees and hunt for leaves to eat. After having done that for some time we play...

The butterflies, the poor butterflies that have gone out of fashion in these days, played, I am ashamed to say, a large part in my life during my childhood, as did also the flie...

We were all standing about her bed at nightfall one spring evening. She had been ailing scarcely more than forty-eight hours; but the doctor said that on account of her great ag...

I still have in my memory, almost agonizing impressions of a serious illness which I had when I was about eight years old. Those about me called it scarlet fever, and its very n...

After that long fever, the very name of which has a sinister sound, I recall the delight I felt when they allowed me to go out into the air, when I was permitted to go down into...

It was about the middle of the summer, after my severe illness, that I went to the Island for a long visit. I was taken there by my brother and my sister, the latter was like a...

The time now arrived for me to begin regular lessons and to write exercises in copy-books, which I invariably smeared with ink--ah! what gloom and dreariness suddenly came into...

He was, as I have said, about fourteen years older than I. I had had very little time to become acquainted with him, to attach myself to him, for his preparation for his vocatio...

“Cakes, cakes, my good hot cakes!” Thus, in a plaintive voice, sang the old woman peddler who regularly, upon winter evenings, during the first ten or twelve years of my life, p...

My Bible was a very small one, with exceedingly fine print. Pressed between its pages were some flowers that I was very fond of; especially was I of the spray of pink larkspur,...

Egypt, the Egypt of antiquity, at a later time, exercised a mysterious fascination over me. I recognized a picture of it immediately, without hesitation and astonishment, in an...

During the winter following the departure of my brother, I passed many of my leisure hours in his room painting the pictures in the “Voyage to Polynesia” which he had given me....

I do not exactly remember at what period I started my museum which absorbed so much of my time. Just above my Aunt Bertha's room there was a tiny garret-chamber that I had taken...

Topffer, who is the only real poet of school-boys, that genus so misunderstood, divides us into three groups: first, those who are in boarding schools; second, those who do all...

In my grandmother's room, at the bottom of the cupboard where she kept “The History of the Bible,” with the terrible pictures illustrating the visions of Revelation, she had als...

My brother had arrived at the Delightful Island. His first letter dated from there was a very long one, it was written on thin paper that had been stained a light yellow by the...

After my ninth birthday my parents, for a time, spoke of putting me into boarding-school, so that I might become habituated to the harder ways of life, and since the matter was...

My great uncle continued to take a very deep interest in my taste for natural history, and among his shells he found a number of duplicates, and these he presented to me. With i...

I am surprised that I cannot recall whether my desire to become a minister transformed itself into a wish to lead the more militant life of missionary, by a slow process or sudd...

In preceding chapters I have not said much about that Limoise which was the scene of my initiation into nature and its wonders. My entire childhood is intimately connected with...

Now comes the apparition of another little friend who stood very high in my childish favor. As nearly as I can remember I became acquainted with her when I was eleven; Antoinett...

It is said that many children who live in the central provinces, away from the ocean, have a great longing to see it. I who had never been away from the monotonous country surro...

Little Jeanne had come over to spend the day at our house; it was at the end of May during that spring in which my expectations were so great--I was twelve years old at the time...

It was about this time that I installed myself in my aunt Claire's room for the purpose of study, and there too I busied myself manufacturing wonders for the “Donkey's Skin.” I...

It happened occasionally; and since I had had the experience, I used to hope that it might occur often, and especially did I wish for a storm when I had failed to prepare my les...

My friends took me as far as the river in the carriage, or I rode on a donkey, or we walked. Once past the stony plateau on the south bank of the river, and once over it and upo...

Speaking of Limoise I will be vain enough to speak here of an act of mine that I consider as brave as it was obedient, for it fell in with a promise that I had given.

At the hotel, where we were obliged to remain until the following day, everything interested us. I remember that night came suddenly, a night of splendor, as we leaned upon the...

The day after my arrival at my uncle's I met some children named Peyrals who became my playmates. According to the fashion of that part of the country their baptismal names were...

The only task required of me during my vacation was that I should read from Fenelon's Telemaque (my education, you see, was a little out of date). My copy of the work was compos...

Castelnau! This ancient name brings to me visions of glorious sunshine and of clear light shining upon noble heights; it evokes the gentle melancholy that I felt among its ruins...

My brother's letters, written close on very fine paper, continued to reach us from time to time; he could only send them to us by sailing vessels bound in our direction which la...

I had very quickly attached myself to my grown cousins, and I felt as well acquainted with them as if I had always known them. I believe it is necessary that there should be the...

The little St. Hermangardes, of whom every one spoke so often, arrived about the middle of September. Their castle was situated in the north upon the bank of the Carreze, but th...

We left the mountains at the beginning of October, but my home-coming was marked by a very painful circumstance--I was sent to school! I went, of course, only as a day scholar;...

Cakes! Cakes! My good hot cakes! The old cake woman had resumed her nightly tour, and again we heard her rapid footsteps and her shrill refrain. Always at the same hour, with th...

The theatre wherein was enacted the “Donkey's Skin,” very much amplified and more elaborate, had now a permanent place in my aunt Claire's room. Little Jeanne, more interested i...

Among those professors who seemed, during my school-days, so severe, and indeed almost cruel to me, the most terrible without any exception were the “Bull of Apis” and the “Big...

It is mamma who is speaking; she is busying herself with the drawers of the chiffonier which every day, for many years, she had asked me to bring to her,--sometimes she pretends...

Because of the haste and confusion brought about by conflicting school tasks, I had not for many months found time to read my Bible; indeed I scarcely had time for a morning pra...

Twice a week, in the history classes, I came in contact with the naval students. To give themselves a sailor-like appearance they wore red sashes, and they constantly drew ships...

On my Thursday holidays during the winter, after having finished my duties and accomplished all my school tasks, I felt the greatest homesickness when I mounted to my museum. It...

At about the end of November it was our custom, my sister's, Lucette's and mine, to make out a list of the things we desired most. Everybody in the two families prepared surpris...

That hard winter passed under the ferule of the “Bull of Apis” and the “Great Ape,” finally came to an end and spring returned; it was always a troublous time for us, the schola...

The return that spring of little Jeanne's father from a sea voyage interested me greatly. For several days her house was topsy-turvy with preparation, and one could guess the jo...

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 maj...

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...

If the personage I then was could but be brought into the presence of the little Parisian boys of twelve or thirteen, educated according to the more perfect modern method, who a...

My room where I now scarcely ever installed myself to study, and which I seldom entered except at night to sleep, became, during the beautiful month of June, my palace of deligh...

Those Thursdays at Limoise when the fierce heat of the noon-day sun overwhelmed everything, and the country side lay asleep and silent under its pitiless rays, it was my habit t...

The Iliad was being explained to us in class,--no doubt I would have loved it, but our master had made it odious by his analysis, his difficult tasks and his parrot-like recital...

One Thursday evening at Limoise, just before the inevitable hour for my departure, I went up alone to the large, old room on the second floor in which I slept. First I leaned ou...

As in the preceding summer we started, my sister and I, at the beginning of August. While it was no longer a journey of adventure, the pleasure of returning and again finding th...

The following morning at daybreak when I awoke, a noisy cadence, to which I was unaccustomed, fell upon my ears; the neighboring weaver had already commenced, even with the dawn...

After the noon dinner it was the custom in my uncle's house to sit for an hour or two in the entry-way of the house, that vestibule inlaid with flagstones and ornamented with a...

One day I had a great desire, wherefore I do not know, unless out of pure bravado and the spirit of perversity, to do something unseemly. After having searched all of one mornin...

In the mountains the end of summer was always a beautiful season, for the meadows lying at the foot of the hillside forests, already yellow, were purple with crocuses. Then, too...

In the first week of October we received a joyous telegram from our father bidding us leave for home as speedily as possible. My brother, who was returning to Europe by a packet...

I awaked the following morning with a feeling of joyousness that penetrated to the very depths of my being, and as I remembered the cause for my happiness my eyes fell upon an e...

And it seems I hardly saw him during those hurried weeks that he spent with us. Of that period, which lasted so short a time, I have very confused visions, similar to those one...

Paul knew by heart many verses of a forbidden poet named Alfred de Musset. The strange quality of these verses troubled me, and yet I was fascinated by them. In class he would w...

I will here recount a dream that I had in my fourteenth year. It came to me during one of those mild and sweet nights that are ushered in by a long and delicious twilight.

And again came radiant June. It was evening, the exquisite hour of twilight. I was alone in my brother's study where I had been for some time; the window was opened wide to a sk...

Vacation came again, and for the third time we took the journey to the South, and there in the glorious August and September sunshine all passed off in the same fashion as durin...

And one day, when September was more than half over, I realized, because of the particularly torturing anxiety I felt when I waked, that I must no longer defer the matter--the t...

I will end these reminiscences here, because what follows is not yet distant enough from me to be submitted to the unknown reader. And besides it seems to me that my childhood r...

All was greatly changed there; my uncle and aunt slept in the graveyard; my boy cousins had left, and my girl cousin, who already had threads of silver among her dark locks, was...