on pass over. Then I attempt a walk on
the mountain above us, in the wet verdure: little pathways lead up it,
between thickets of camellias and bamboo.

Waiting till a shower is over, I take refuge in the courtyard of an
old temple halfway up the hill, buried in a wood of century plants
with gigantic branches; it is reached by granite steps, through strange
gateways, as deeply furrowed as the old Celtic dolmens. The trees have
also invaded this yard; the daylight is overcast with a greenish tint,
and the drenching torrent of rain is full of torn-up leaves and moss.
Old granite monsters, of unknown shapes, are seated in the corners,
and grimace with smiling ferocity: their faces are full of indefinable
mystery that makes me shudder amid the moaning music of the wind, in the
gloomy shadows of the clouds and branches.

They could not have resembled the Japanese of our day, the men who had
thus conceived these ancient temples, who built them everywhere, and
filled the country with them, even in its most solitary nooks.

An hour later, in the twilight of that stormy day, on the same mountain,
I encountered a clump of trees somewhat similar to oaks in appearance;
they, too, have been twisted by the tempest, and the tufts of undulating
grass at their feet are laid low, tossed about in every direction. There
was suddenly brought back to my mind my first impression of a strong
wind in the woods of Limoise, in the province of Saintonge, twenty-eight
years ago, in a month of March of my childhood.

That, the first wind-storm my eyes ever beheld sweeping over the
landscape, blew in just the opposite quarter of the world (and many
years have rapidly passed over that memory), the spot where the best
part of my life has been spent.

I refer too often, I fancy, to my childhood; I am foolishly fond of it.
But it seems to me that then only did I truly experience sensations or
impressions; the smallest trifles I saw or heard then were full of
deep and hidden meaning, recalling past images out of oblivion,
and reawakening memories of prior existences; or else they were
presentiments of existences to come, future incarnations in the land of
dreams, expectations of wondrous marvels that life and the world held
in store for me-for a later period, no doubt, when I should be grown
up. Well, I have grown up, and have found nothing that answered to my
indefinable expectations; on the contrary, all has narrowed and darkened
around me, my vagu