I can hardly say what the reason of it was, but it is very certain that I
had a vague sense of some impending event as we took our seats in the
Master's library. He seemed particularly anxious that we should be
comfortably seated, and shook up the cushions of the arm-chairs himself,
and got them into the right places.
Now go to sleep--he said--or listen,--just which you like best. But I am
going to begin by telling you both a secret.
Liberavi animam meam. That is the meaning of my book and of my literary
life, if I may give such a name to that party-colored shred of human
existence. I have unburdened myself in this book, and in some other
pages, of what I was born to say. Many things that I have said in my
ripe days have been aching in my soul since I was a mere child. I say
aching, because they conflicted with many of my inherited beliefs, or
rather traditions. I did not know then that two strains of blood were
striving in me for the mastery,--two! twenty, perhaps,--twenty thousand,
for aught I know,--but represented to me by two,--paternal and maternal.
Blind forces in themselves; shaping thoughts as they shaped features and
battled for the moulding of constitution and the mingling of temperament.
Philosophy and poetry came--to me before I knew their names.
Je fis mes premiers vers, sans savoir les ecrire.
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