On my Thursday holidays during the winter, after having finished my duties and accomplished¹ all my school tasks, I felt the greatest homesickness when I mounted to my museum. It was always a little late when I finished my lessons, and the light was usually fading when I looked down at the great meadows that appeared inexpressibly melancholy² as they stretched before me enwrapped in a grayish-pink mist. I was homesick for the summer, homesick for the sun and the south, all of which were suggested by the butterflies from my uncle's garden that I had arranged and pinned under glass, and by the mountain fossils that the little Peyrals and I had collected in the summer time.  
It was a foretaste of that longing³ for somewhere else which later, after my return from long voyages to tropical countries, spoiled my visits to my home.
 
Oh! there was in particular the pinkish-yellow butterfly! There were times when I experienced a bitter pleasure in seeking to understand the great sadness that it caused me. It was in the glass case at the far end of the room; its two colors so fresh and unusual, like a Chinese painting, or a fairy's robe, were exquisite⁴ foils for each other; the butterfly formed a luminous⁵ whole that shone out brightly in the gray twilight⁶, and it caused the other butterflies surrounding it to look as dull as dun-colored little bats.
 
As soon as my eyes rested upon it I seemed to hear drawled out lazily, in a mountaineer's treble, the refrain: “Ah! ah! the good, good story!” And again I saw the white porch of Bories in the midst of the silence and the hot sunshine of a summer noon. A deep regret for past and gone vacations took possession of me; I felt saddened when I tried to recrea............