When I recall that time, when I think of those meadows all abloom with amourettes, and of those pink moths, there is mingled, to my regret, a sort of indefinable pain whose intensity I cannot understand, an anguish I always feel when I find myself in the presence of things that impress and charm me with their undercurrent of mystery. CHAPTER LXII. I have already said that I was extraordinarily childish for my years. 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 at so early an age declaim, discuss and harangue, and entertain all sorts of political ideas, I would, I am sure, be struck dumb by their discourses, and how singular they would find me and with what disdain they would treat me! I am myself astonished at the childishness that I displayed in certain ways, for in artistic perception and imagination, in spite of my lack of method, and lack of real knowledge, I was incontestably more advanced than are the majority of boys of my age; if that youthful journal, the strip of paper wrapped about a reed in the similitude of a conjuring-book, of which I spoke a short time ago, were still in existence it would emphasize twenty fold this pale record, on which it seems to me there has already fallen the dust of ages. CHAPTER LXIII. 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 delight, and I went there after dinner to enjoy the long, and mild, and beautiful twilights. I had invented a sport which I deemed an improvement upon the rag-rat trick that the dirty little street urchins whisked, at the end of long strings, about the feet and legs of the passers-by. My game amused me greatly and I prosecuted it with vivacity. It would, I think, amuse me still if I dared play it, and I hope that my trick will be imitated by all the youngsters who are imprudently allowed to read this chapter. On the other side of the street, just opposite my window, and similarly upon the second floor there lived the good old maid, Miss Victoire--(she wore a great old-fashioned frilled cap and round spectacles). I had obtained permission from her to fix to the fastening of her shutter a string that I then brought all across the street and into my window, the remainder of this string I rolled upon a stick, ball-fashion.