Those Thursdays at Limoise when the fierce heat of the noon-day sun overwhelmed everything, and the country side lay asleep and silent under its pitiless rays, it was my habit to clamber up to the top of the old wall that enclosed the garden, and there I sat astride and immovable for a long time. The branching ivy¹ reached to my shoulders and innumerable flies and locusts² buzzed around me. From the height of this observatory³ I had a view of the hot and lonely region lying beyond, of the moorland and woodland, and from there I saw a thin white veil of mist that was agitated⁴ ceaselessly by the waves of heat, as the surface of a tiny lake is ruffled⁵ by the least wind. Those horizons seen from Limoise still had for me the strange mystery I had endowed them with in the first summers of my life. The region visible from the top of the wall was a rather solitary⁶ one, and I tried to make myself believe that the waste land and woodland was a veritable untrodden country that stretched out indefinitely; and although I now knew well that about me everywhere there were roads; cultivated fields, and prosperous villages, I succeeded in clinging to the illusion that the surrounding country and contiguous lands were wild and

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