black pines,
cypresses, and yews. It was a wild, savage spot, strange and singular;
ravens hovered above the pines, filling the air with their uncouth notes,
pies chattered, and I heard the cry of an eagle from a neighbouring peak;
there lay the lake, the dark, solitary, and almost inaccessible lake;
gloomy shadows were upon it, which, strangely modified as gusts of wind
agitated the surface, occasionally assumed the shape of monsters. So I
stood on the Alpine elevation, and looked now on the gay distant river,
and now at the dark granite-encircled lake close beside me in the lone
solitude, and I thought of my brother and myself. I am no moraliser; but
the gay and rapid river, and the dark and silent lake, were, of a verity,
no bad emblems of us two.

So far from being quick and clever like my brother, and able to rival the
literary feat which I have recorded of him, many years elapsed before I
was able to understand the nature of letters, or to connect them. A
lover of nooks and retired corners, I was as a child in the habit of
fleeing from society, and of sitting for hours together with my head on
my breast. What I was thinking about, it would be difficult to say at
this distance of time; I remember perfectly well, however, being ever
conscious of a peculiar heaviness within me, and at times of a strange
sensation of fear, which occasionally amounted to horror, and for which I
could assign no real cause whatever.

By nature slow of speech, I took no pleasure in conversation, nor in
hearing the voices of my fellow-creatures. When people addressed me, I
not unfrequently, especially if they were strangers, turned away my head
from them, and if they persisted in their notice burst into tears, which
singularity of behaviour by no means tended to dispose people in my
favour. I was as much disliked as my brother was deservedly beloved and
admired. My parents, it is true, were always kind to me; and my brother,
who was good-nature itself, was continually lavishing upon me every mark
of affection.

There was, however, one individual who, in the days of my childhood, was
disposed to form a favourable opinion of me. One day, a Jew--I have
quite forgotten the circumstance, but I was long subsequently informed of
it--one day a travelling Jew knocked at the door of a farmhouse in which
we had taken apartments; I was near at hand, sitting in the bright
sunshine, drawing strange lines on the dust with my fingers, an ape a