divide the main streams at least of the winds that had played
on [174] him, and study so the first stage in that mental journey.

The old house, as when Florian talked of it afterwards he always called
it, (as all children do, who can recollect a change of home, soon
enough but not too soon to mark a period in their lives) really was an
old house; and an element of French descent in its inmates--descent
from Watteau, the old court-painter, one of whose gallant pieces still
hung in one of the rooms--might explain, together with some other
things, a noticeable trimness and comely whiteness about everything
there--the curtains, the couches, the paint on the walls with which the
light and shadow played so delicately; might explain also the tolerance
of the great poplar in the garden, a tree most often despised by
English people, but which French people love, having observed a certain
fresh way its leaves have of dealing with the wind, making it sound, in
never so slight a stirring of the air, like running water.

The old-fashioned, low wainscoting went round the rooms, and up the
staircase with carved balusters and shadowy angles, landing half-way up
at a broad window, with a swallow's nest below the sill, and the
blossom of an old pear-tree showing across it in late April, against
the blue, below which the perfumed juice of the find of fallen fruit in
autumn was so fresh. At the next turning came the closet which held on
its deep shelves the best china. Little angel [175] faces and reedy
flutings stood out round the fireplace of the children's room. And on
the top of the house, above the large attic, where the white mice ran
in the twilight--an infinite, unexplored wonderland of childish
treasures, glass beads, empty scent-bottles still sweet, thrum of
coloured silks, among its lumber--a flat space of roof, railed round,
gave a view of the neighbouring steeples; for the house, as I said,
stood near a great city, which sent up heavenwards, over the twisting
weather-vanes, not seldom, its beds of rolling cloud and smoke, touched
with storm or sunshine. But the child of whom I am writing did not
hate the fog because of the crimson lights which fell from it sometimes
upon the chimneys, and the whites which gleamed through its openings,
on summer mornings, on turret or pavement. For it is false to suppose
that a child's sense of beauty is dependent on any choiceness or
special fineness, in the objects which present themse