No one knew that I was there, and never before had I felt so isolated at the top of the house, nor more tempted by the unknown.
With a beating heart I opened a volume of De Musset's poems: his Don Paez.
The first phrases were as musical and rhythmical as if sung by a seductive golden-voiced siren:
Black eyebrows, snow-white hands, and to indicate the tinyness
Of her feet, I need only say she was an Andalusian countess.
That spring night when the darkness fell about me, when my eyes, although never so close to the book, could no longer distinguish anything of the enchanting verses save rows of little lines that showed gray against the white of the page, I went out into the town alone.
In the almost deserted streets, not yet lighted, the rows of linden and acacia trees all abloom, deepened the shadows and perfumed the air with their heavy fragrance. I pulled my felt hat over my eyes and, like Don Paez, I strode along with a light supple step, and looked up at balconies and indulged in I know not what little childish dreams of Spanish twilights and Andalusian serenades.
CHAPTER LXXIX.
Vacation came again, and for the third time we took the journey to the South, and there in the glorious August and September sunshine all passed off in the same fashion as during preceding summers; the same games with my loyal band, the expeditions to the vineyards and mountains; in the ruins of Castelnau, the same brooding over mediaeval times, and, in the sequestered woodland path where we had struck our vein of silver, we still eagerly turned up the red soil, putting on meantime the airs of bold adventurers,—the little Peyrals, however, no longer believed in the mines.
These beginnings of summer, always so alike, deluded me into thinking that in spite of my occasional fears my childhood would be indefinitely prolonged; but I no longer felt “joy at waking;” a sort of disquietude, such as oppresses one when he has left his duty undone, weighed upon me more and more heavily each morning when I thought that time was flying, that the vacation would soon be over, and that I still lacked the courage to come to a decision in regard to my future.