I believe that that spring was the most radiant and the most ravishingly happy one of my childhood, in contrast no doubt to the terrible winter spent under the rigorous care of the Great Ape.  
Oh! the end of May, the high grass and then the June mowing¹! In what a glory of golden light I see it all again!
 
I took evening walks with my father and sister as I had done during my earlier years; they now came to meet me at the close of school, at half-past four, and we set out immediately for the fields. Our preference that spring was for a certain meadow abloom with pink amourettes, and I always brought home great bouquets² of these flowers.
 
In that same meadow a migratory³ and ephemeral species of moth⁴, black and pink (of the same pink as the amourettes) had hatched out, and they slept poised⁵ on the long stalks of the grass, or flew away as lightly as the flowers shed their petals⁶ when we walked through the hay. . . . And all of these things appear to me again as I saw them in the exquisite⁷, limpid⁸ June atmosphere. . . . During the afternoon classes, the thought of the sun-dappled meadows made me more restless than did even the mild air and the spring odors that came in through the open windows.
 
I cherish particularly the remembrance of an evening i............