I will now describe a game that gave Antoinette and me the greatest
pleasure during those two delicious summers.
We pretended to be two caterpillars, and we would creep along the ground
upon our stomachs and our knees and hunt for leaves to eat. After having
done that for some time we played that we were very very sleepy, and we
would lie down in a corner under the trees and cover our heads with our
white aprons--we had become cocoons. We remained in this condition for
some time, and so thoroughly did we enter into the role of insects in
a state of metamorphosis, that any one listening would have heard pass
between us, in a tone of the utmost seriousness, conversations of this
nature:
“Do you think that you will soon be able to fly?”
“Oh yes! I'll be flying very soon; I feel them growing in my shoulders
now . . . they'll soon unfold.” (“They” naturally referred to wings.)
Finally we would wake up, stretch ourselves, and without saying anything
we conveyed by our manner our astonishment at the great transformation
in our condition. . . .
Then suddenly we began to run lightly and very nimbly in our tiny shoes;
in our hands we held the corners of our pinafores which we waved as if
they were wings; we ran and ran, and chased each other, and flew about
making sharp and fantastic curves as we went. We hastened from flower
to flower and smelled all of them, and we continually imitated the
restlessness of giddy moths; we imagined too that we were imitating
their buzzing when we exclaimed: “Hou ou ou!” a noise we made by filling
the cheeks with air and puffing it out quickly through the half-closed
mouth.