But I did not heed, so absolutely intoxicated was I with the magnificence about me, the like of which I did not recall ever to have seen before. That was the beginning of those almost daily excursions that I took with my father and sister, and that I kept up for so long a time (almost to my boarding-school days). It is through them that I became so well acquainted with the surrounding country and with the varieties of flowers found there. Poor fields and meadows of my native country! So monotonous, so flat, one so like another; fields of hay and daisies where in childhood I would disappear from sight and hide under the green vegetation. Fields of corn and paths bordered with hawthorn, I love you all in spite of your monotony! Toward the west, in the far distance, my eyes sought for a glimpse of the sea. Sometimes when we had gone a long way there would appear upon the horizon, among the other lines there, a straight bluish one; it was the sea; and it lured me to it finally as a great and patient lover lures, who sure of his power is willing to wait. My sister and my brother, of whom I have not spoken before, were considerably older than I; it seemed almost as if we belonged to different generations. For that reason they petted me even more than did my father and mother, my grandmother and aunts; and as I was the only child among them I was cherished like a little hot-house plant, I was too tenderly guarded and remained all too unacquainted with thorns and brambles. CHAPTER VIII. 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 living in a partial light, in a sort of misty grayness, they turn their gaze inward; and when by chance they do look out their impressions are ten times more vivid than are those of ordinary people. To me that seems a little paradoxical. But it is true that sometimes an enveloping darkness aids one to clearer vision; as in a panorama building, for example, where the obscurity about the entrance prepares one better for the climax, and gives the scene depicted a more real and vivid appearance. In the course of my life I would without doubt have been less impressed by the ever shifting phantasmagoria of existence had I not begun my journey in a place almost without distinctive color, in a tranquil corner of the most commonplace little town, receiving an education austerely pious; and where my longest journey was bounded by the forests of Limoise (as wonderful to me as a primeval forest) and by the shores of the island of Oleron, that seemed very immense when I went to it to visit my aged aunts. But after all is said, it was in the yard about our house that I passed the happiest of my summers--it seemed to me that that was my particular kingdom, and I adored it.