1.—TERROR AND REPUGNANCE OF CHILDHOOD.
TERROR AND REPUGNANCE OF CHILDHOOD.[F]
[F] This fragment of a domestic journal was originally intended for insertion in "The Bird." [It is from the pen of Madame Michelet.]
"Winter, summer, and nearly all the fine days of the year, had passed since the departure of my father for Louisiana, from which he was not fated to return. Our country-house had remained deserted. My mother, full of sad presentiments, and fearing herself to revisit it, sent me there, one afternoon, with my brothers, to gather some fruit.
"And I went,—cherishing, I must own, a kind of illusion, and almost believing I should be received on the paternal threshold by the beloved arms.
"Deeply agitated, I crossed the approach to the domain, and with a spring arrived opposite the door which my father had so often opened with that ineffable smile I still can see.