I found great pleasure in watching her goings and comings, her sudden haltings, her surprises; when she realized that I was watching her, she in turn watched me, posing in an attitude peculiarly her own;--very graceful, but very like a Chinese belle, with a paw extended as if holding a fan, just as I have seen one holding an article raise coquettishly the little finger; and her droll golden eyes grew infinitely expressive, “speaking” to mine. “Please permit me to amuse myself? Does it incommode you in the least? Look! I walk with lightness, I play with extreme carefulness, I go about with discretion among these beautiful green things that smell so sweetly, and this good air is so refreshing in this wide, free space! And these other strange objects that I see in turn high over us, ‘Things they call stars, that they call sun, and they call moon!’ Oh! how different from our trembling lodging on the ship and how delightful to be here together in this happy place!” This home, so new to her, was equally for me the oldest, the most familiar of all places on the earth; whose least details, whose feeblest blade of grass were known to me since the earliest and most impressible days of my existence. So dear to me that I am bound to it with all my being, so dear that I love with a love akin to idolatry the old vines and shrubs which are there, the jasmine, the honeysuckles, and a certain dielytra rose, which every returning March unfolds its precocious leaves, gives the same April roses, fades in the June sun, then burns in August heat and seems to perish. And while Pussy Gray abandons herself to the joy of youth and springtime, I, on the contrary, knowing that all this will pass away, feel for the first time in my life, shadows like those of evening stealing over my own life,--presages of the inexorable night, the morningless night of the final autumn,--never to be succeeded by spring. And with profound sadness in this courtyard bright with sunshine, I gaze upon the two dear ones, their silvery hair, their mourning robes--my mother and Aunt Clara, going and coming, stooping down as has been their wont for many springs, to discover what flower seeds had come up, or raising their heads to see the buds of honeysuckles and rose-trees. And when their sombre robes vanished from my view, at the end of the green avenue, which is the vestibule of our family residence, I am forced to notice that their steps are slower and less firm. Oh, time, perhaps near, when in the unchanging green avenue I shall behold them no more. Can it be possible that time may arrive? If ever they shall be gone I have the illusion that it will not be an entire departure, so long as I remain there recalling their presence;--that in the quiet summer evenings I shall sometimes see their spirits glide beneath the jasmine; that something of their existence will still live in the plants they have tended, and breathe from the falling honeysuckle, the old dielytra rose. (XIII)