I wish to add to the history of this ray of sunshine the sequel that is
intimately connected with it. Years passed; I became a man, and after
having been among many people and experienced many adventures I lived
for an autumn and winter in an isolated house in an unfrequented part
of Stamboul. It was there that every evening at approximately the same
hour, a ray of sunlight came in through the window and fell obliquely on
the wall and lit up the niche (hollowed out of the stone wall) in which
I had placed an Athenian vase. And I never saw that ray of sunlight
without thinking of the one I had seen upon that Sunday of long ago;
nor without having the same, precisely the same sad emotion, scarcely
diminished by time, and always full of the same mystery. And when I
had to leave Turkey, when I was obliged to quit my dangerous but adored
lodgings in Stamboul, with all my busy and hurried preparations for
departure there was mingled this strange regret: never more should I see
the oblique ray of sunshine come into the stairway window and fall upon
the niche in the wall where the Greek vase stood.
Perhaps under all of this there may have been, if not recollections of
a previous personal experience, at least the reflected inchoate thoughts
of ancestors which I am unable in any clearer way to bring out of
darkness. But enough! I must say no more, for I again find myself in the
land of vague fancy, gliding phantoms and illusive nothings.
For this almost unintelligible chapter there is no excuse that I can
offer, save that I have written it with the greatest frankness and
sincerity.
CHAPTER VII.
And I now recall the impressions of springtime, all the fresh splendor
of May; and I remember vividly the lonely road called the Fountain road.
(As I am endeavoring to put my recollections into some sort of order I
think that at this time I must have been about five years old.)
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, to see the budding foliage and the
tasselled shrubs and hedges. Along the sides of the road the grass was
all the same length, and the flowers in the grass with their exquisite
mingling of the red of the geranium and the blue of the speedwell,
made the whole earth seem a great bouquet. As I plucked the flowers I
scarcely knew which way to run; in my eagerness I trod upon them and
my legs became wet from the dew--I marvelled at all the richness at my
disposal, and I longed to take great armfuls of the flowers and carry
them away with me.
My sister, who had gathered a sprig of hawthorn, one of iris and some
long sheath-like grasses leaned towards me, and took my hand, and said:
“You have enough for the present; you see, dear, that we could never
gather all of them.”
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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