During all this time my museum made great progress, and it soon became
necessary for me to have some new shelves put up.
My great uncle continued to take a very deep interest in my taste for
natural history, and among his shells he found a number of duplicates,
and these he presented to me. With indefatigable patience he taught me
the scientific classifications of Cuvier, Linne, Lamarck or Bruguieres,
and I was astonished at the attention with which I listened to him.
In a very old little desk, that was a part of the furniture of my
museum, I had a copy-book into which I copied, from uncle's notes, and
numbered with the greatest care, the name of the species, genus, family
and class of each shell,--also the place of its origin. And there by the
dim light that fell upon the desk, in the silence of that little retreat
so high above the street, surrounded with objects what had come from
distant corners of the earth and from the depths of the sea, when
my mind wandered, and I became fatigued because of the mysterious
differences in the forms of animals, and because of the infinite variety
of shells, with what emotion I wrote down in my book, opposite the name
of a Spirifer or a Terebratula, such enchanting words as these: “Eastern
coast of Africa,” “coast of Guinea,” “Indian Ocean.”
I recall that in this same museum I experienced, one afternoon in March,
a peculiar feeling indicative of my tendency towards reaction, that
later, at certain periods of self-abandonment, caused me to seek the
rough and uncouth society of sailors, and made me revel in noise and
change and gayety.
It was Mardi-Gras time. At sundown I had gone out with my father to see
the masqueraders who were in the streets; and having returned rather
early I went immediately to my attic-room to classify some shells. But
the noise of the revellers and the clashing of their tambourines
reached even to the retreat where I was occupying myself with scientific
matters, and the sounds awakened in me a feeling of inexpressible
sadness. It was the same emotion, greatly intensified, that I had when
I listened, of winter evenings, to the old cake vendor, and heard her
voice die away into those far-off squalid streets near the harbor. I
experienced an unexpected anguish very difficult to define in words. I
had a vague impression, which was the cause of my suffering, that I
was imprisoned; and for the moment, I thought that my liking for dry
classifications and nature study shut me away from the little boys of
every age who were in the streets below mingling with the sailors, more
childish than they, who tricked out in dreadful masks ran and frollicked
and sang coarse songs. It goes without saying that I had no desire to
be one of them; the very idea of jostling against them filled me with
distaste, and I disdained their rude sport. And I sincerely felt that
it was better for me to be where I was, occupied with putting the
many-colored family of the Purpura and the twenty-three varieties of the
Gastropoda in order.
But nevertheless the gay and merry people in the street troubled me
strangely. And, as was usual with me when I felt distressed, I went down
to look for my mother for the purpose of begging her to come up to keep
me company. Astonished at my request (for I scarcely ever asked any one
into my den), astonished especially by my anxious manner, she said with
an air of pleasantry that it was silly for a boy of ten to be afraid
to stay alone; but she consented to return with me, and when there
she seated herself close to me and occupied herself with a piece of
embroidery. Oh! how reassuring was her sweet and darling presence! I
returned to my task without concerning myself further about the noise of
the maskers, and as I worked I glanced up now and again to look at her
beautiful profile cut in silhouette, because of the darkness without,
upon my tiny window pane.