No one saw clearly into her soul. She herself did not know it. Obsessed with the cruel memory to which she attributed all her misfortunes, she could not unravel with clearness all that stirred obscurely in the innermost depths of her being, nor understand the vague passions, the imprisoned aspirations, the captive dreams which had accumulated in her since childhood. She was like a nestling bird that, without realizing the obscure and nostalgic forces which drew it toward heaven of which it has no knowledge, crushes its head and maims its wings against the cage bars. Instead of craving death as she thought she was, her soul within her, just like that bird that hungered for the unknown skies, hungered for life radiant with tenderness, filled with love; and just like that bird, was dying from this unassuaged hunger. As a child, she gave herself entirely, with all the exaggerations of her fervid nature, to the love for material things and animals; as a young girl she was given to love of dreams of the impossible, but material objects never brought her peace, nor did her dreams assume a precise and soothing form. She had no one to guide her, no one to set right this youthful mind already shaken by internal shocks, no one to open the door of this heart to wholesome reality, a door already guarded by chimeric shadows in her vacant state; no one to whom she could pour out the exuberance of her thoughts, her tenderness, her desires, which finding no outlet for expansion, accumulated, boiled within her, ready to burst the fragile mould poorly protected by nerves too jaded.