All this, and still more, my forced leisure, the obsession of one
besetting thought, my contempt for all besides, the want of money to
procure other amusement, and the almost claustral seclusion in which I
lived, disposed me to a life of more intense and eager study than I had
yet led. I passed my whole day seated at a little writing-table, which
was placed beneath the small round window opening on the yard of the
Hôtel Richelieu. The room was heated by a Dutch stove; a screen
enclosed my table and chair, and hid me from the observation of the
young men of fashion who often came to see my friend. In the spacious
yard below there were sounds of carriages, then silence, and now and
then bright rays of winter sun struggling against the grovelling fog of
the streets of Paris, which reminded me a little of the play of light,
the sounds of the wind, and the transparent mists of our mountains.
Sometimes I would see a sweet little boy six or eight years old playing
there; he was the son of the concierge. There was something in his face
which seemed that of a suffering angel; in his fair hair curled on his
forehead, and in his intelligent and ingenuous countenance, that
reminded me of the innocent faces of the children of my own province.
Indeed, I discovered that his family had come originally from a village
near that in which my father resided, had fallen into want, and had
been transplanted to Paris. This child had conceived a fondness for me,
from seeing me always at the window above the rooms his mother
inhabited, and had of his own accord and gratuitously devoted himself
to my service. He executed all my messages; brought me my bread, some
cheese, or the fruit for my breakfast; and went every morning to
purchase my little provisions at the grocer's. I used to take my frugal
repast on my writing-table, in the midst of my open books or
interrupted pages. The child had a black dog, which had been forgotten
at the house by some visitor; this dog had ended like the child by
attaching itself to me, and they could not be made to go down the
little wooden stairs when once they had ascended them. During the
greater part of the day, they lay and played together on the mat at my
feet beneath my table. At a later period I took away the dog with me
from Paris, and kept it many years, as a loving and faithful memento of
those days of solitude. I lost him in 1820, not without tears, in
traversing the forests of the Pontine Marshes between Rome and
Terracina. The poor child is become a man, and has learned the art of
engraving, which he practices ably at Lyons. My name having resounded
since, even in his shop, he came to see me, and wept with joy at
beholding me, and with grief at hearing of the loss of the dog. Poor
heart of man! that ever requires what it has once loved, and that sheds
tears of the same water, for the loss of an empire, or for the loss of
an animal.