r attempt to explain how the Middle Ages have such
an attraction for my mind, I should see therein an atavistic
accumulation of religious feeling fixed in my family, on the female side
no doubt, and of religiousness in ecclesiastical architecture--these
touch.

"Another example illustrating the role of association of ideas in the
same matter. One Sunday night I left Noumea in the carriage of Dr.
F...... who was going to visit a nunnery five leagues from there. At the
moment of our arrival the doctor asked what time it was. 'Half-past
two,' I said, looking at my watch. As we stopped in the convent court
in front of the chapel I _heard_ the lusty conclusion of a psalm. 'They
are singing vespers,' I remarked to the doctor. He commenced to laugh.
'What time are vespers sung in your town?' 'At half-past two,' I
answered. I opened the chapel door in order to show the doctor that
vespers had just been held: the chapel was vacant. As I stood there,
somewhat non-plussed, the doctor remarked, 'Cerebral automatism.'

"I may add here, _by association_ of ideas. The doctor had seen through
me, and had with fine insight perceived _why_ I had _heard_ the end of
the psalm. The incident made a great impression on me, all the more as
ever since the age of eight my memory testifies to a like hallucination,
but of sight in place of hearing. It was at L...... that on Good Friday
they rang at the cathedral with all their might. It was the very moment
before the bells remain silent for three days, and it is known that this
silence, ordained in the liturgy, is explained to children by telling
them that during these two days the bells have flown to Rome. Naturally
I was treated to this little tale, and as they finished telling it, I
_saw_ a bell flying at an angle that I could still describe.

"But this transforming power of my imagination is not present in me to
the same extent as regards all things. It is much more operative in
relation to Romano-Gothic architecture, mystic literature, and
sociological knowledge than in relation, for instance, to my memories of
travels. When I see again, in the mind's eye, the Isle of Bourbon,
Niagara, Tahiti, Calcutta, Melbourne, the Pyramids and the Sphinx, the
graphic representation is intellectually perfect. The objects live again
in all their external surroundings. I feel the _Khamsinn_, the desert
wind that scorched me at the foot of Pompey's Column; I hear the sea
breaking into foam on the barrier re