Considerations of prudence had led her to
choose an apartment some distance from the center of the city; perhaps
she had other quarters, for she sometimes received a number of visitors.
Her lover's friends sometimes visited her, and this room was doubtless
only a _petite maison_; it overlooked the Luxembourg, the garden of which
extended as far as my eye could reach.
As a cork held under water seems restless under the hand which holds it,
and slips through the fingers to rise to the surface, thus there stirred
in me a sentiment that I could neither overcome nor escape. The garden of
the Luxembourg made my heart leap and banished every other thought. How
many times had I stretched out on one of those little mounds, a sort
sylvan school, while I read in the cool shade some book filled with
foolish poetry! For such, alas! were the debauches of my childhood. I saw
many souvenirs of the past among those leafless trees and faded lawns.
There, when ten years of age, I had walked with my brother and my tutor,
throwing bits of bread to some of the poor benumbed birds; there, seated
under a tree, I had watched a group of little girls as they danced; I
felt my heart beat in unison with the refrain of their childish song;
there, returning from school, I had followed a thousand times the same
path, lost in contemplation of some verse of Virgil and kicking the
pebbles at my feet. "Oh! my childhood! You are there!" I cried.
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