Of the first places of my childhood but a very faint impression remains with me,--perhaps because we were always travelling, and because I look more for persons than for scenes,--except my having stayed longest in Valencia. Probably from this early travelling I derive my travelling mania. After all, however, it lies in my nature. But _you_ always believe, like the Germans, that you learn that which you properly inherit or create. By my mother I was more hated and loved than by any one. I am now clear about her. She was wholly born for art or for the arts, although I believe that she was originally marked out by the gods for the stage. She was everything this minute, nothing the next; curses and prayers, belief and unbelief, hatred and love, alternated in this epic nature. She could have lavished a world, and she could have stolen one. She once pressed me to her heart, and said, 'Wert thou not my daughter, I would steal or kill thee out of mere love'; and that was when I had said, 'I love Medea more than Creusa.' "However, she was too inconsistent to be wholly loved; I loved my invisible father far more. I thought he was _God the Father_. I once imagined he must dwell in the _Porta Cœli_;[107] for whole hours together I went round the garden of the dead of the cloister, and looked longingly through the palms over the roses of the graves; I hung on every living thing, even to pain. A dying canary-bird once made me sick, and I thought the mass for the dead was read for him. On God and spirits also I hung in a sort of intoxication. They once flashed by before me in the fire which I struck out of sugar in the dark. I never played, but read early. As I was very serious, and my form developed itself precociously, I was early treated as a grown person, and I desired it too. No one was earnest enough for me, except my guardian, who, with secret hand, governed my development. Over books and in travelling carriages my early life passed away. I envied men, and their knowledge, and their freedom, but they did not please me, still less did women. I passed for proud--and at an earlier period I was so too--and for fantastical. I took it not ill, and said, 'You have your way, and I mine.'" The narrative was interrupted by Dian and Julienne. 118. CYCLE.