From her windows, across the houses and the walls covered with roses and jasmine, one could see the ramparts of the town. They were so near to us that their old trees were visible; and beyond them lay those great plains of our country called prees (prairies) all so alike, and as monotonous1 as the neighboring seas. From the window one also saw the river. At full tide, when it almost overflowed2 its banks, it looked, as it wound along through the green meadows, like silver lace; and the large and small boats that passed in the far distance mounted upon this silver thread toward the harbor and from there sailed out into the great sea.
As this was our only glimpse of real country the windows in my aunt Bertha's room had always a great attraction for me. Especially had they in the evening at sunset, for from them I could watch the sun sink mysteriously behind the prairies. Oh! those sunsets that I saw from my aunt Bertha's windows, what ecstasy3 overcast4 with melancholy5 they awakened6 in me! The winter sunsets seen through the closed windows were a pale rose color. Those of summer time, upon stormy evenings, after a hot, bright day, I contemplated7 from the open window, and as I did so I would breathe in the sweet odors given out by the jasmine blossoms growing on the wall: it seems to me that there are no such sunsets now as there were then. When the sunsets were notably8 splendid and unusual, if I was not in the room, aunt Bertha, who never missed one, would call out hastily: “Dearie! Dearie! Come quickly!” From any corner of the house I heard that call and understood it, and I went swift as a hurricane and mounted the stairs four steps at a time. I mounted the more rapidly because the stairway had already begun to fill with dread9 shadows; and in the turnings and corners I saw the imaginary forms of ghosts and monsters that at nightfall always pursued me as I ran up the stairs.
My aunt Bertha's room, with its simple white muslin curtains, was as modest as my grandmother's. The walls, covered with an old-fashioned paper in vogue10 at the commencement of the century, were ornamented11 with water colors similar to those in my grandmother's room. The picture that I looked at most often was a pastel after Raphael of a virgin12 in white, blue and rose color. The rays of the setting sun always fell upon this picture (I have already said the hour of sunset was the time I preferred most to be in this room). This virgin was very much like my aunt Bertha; in spite of the great difference in their ages, one was struck with the resemblance between the straight lines and regularity13 of their profiles.
On this same floor, but upon the street side, lived my other grandmother (the one who always dressed in black) and her daughter, my aunt Claire, the person in the house who petted me most.
Upon winter evenings, after I had been to my aunt Bertha's room to see the sunset, it was my custom to go to them. I usually found them together in my grandmother's room and I would seat myself near the fire in a little chair placed there for me. But the twilight14 hour spent with them was always a disturbing one. . . . After all the amusements, all the day's running and playing, to sit in the dusk almost motionless upon my tiny chair, with eyes wide open, uneasily watching for the least change in the shadows, especially on that side of the room where the door opened on the dim stairway, was very painful to me. . . . I am sure that if my grandmother and aunt had known of the melancholy and terrors which the twilight induced in me, they would have spared me by lighting15 the lamp, but they did not know my sufferings; and it was the custom of the aged16 persons by whom I was surrounded, to sit tranquilly17 at nightfall in their accustomed places without having need for a lighted lamp. As it grew darker one or the other, grandmother or aunt, would draw her chair closer to me, and when I had that protection about me I felt completely happy and reassured18 and would say: “Please tell me stories about the Island.”
The Island, that is the Island of Oleron, was my mother's native place, my grandmother's and aunt's also, which they had quitted twenty years before my birth to establish themselves upon the main land. The Island, or the least thing that came from it, had a singular charm for me.
It was quite near us, for from a garret window at the top of the house we could, upon a very clear day, see the extreme end of its extensive plain; it appeared a little bluish line against a still paler one which was the arm of the ocean separating us from it. . . . To get to it we had to take a long journey in wretched country
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