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THE CONFESSION OF A FOOL 23
After midnight our enthusiasm, which had been kept
aUve by the constantly changing panorama and the
memories which it called up, cooled a little. We were
fighting against an overwhelming desire to sleep. The
early dawn found us with pallid faces, shivering in the
morning breeze. We suddenly became sentimental ; we
swore eternal friendship ; it was fate that had thrown us
together—we dimly discerned the fatal bond which was to
connect our lives in the future. I was beginning to look
haggard, for I had not yet regained my strength after
an attack of intermittent fever ; they treated me like an
ailing child ; the Baroness wrapped her rug round me and
made me drink some wine, all the while talking to me
with a mother’s tenderness. I let them have their way.
I was almost delirious with want of sleep ; my pent-up
feelings overflowed ; this womanly tenderness, the secret
of which none but a motherly woman knows, was a new
experience to me. I poured out on her a deluge of
respectful homage ; over-excited by sleeplessness, I became
lightheaded, and gave the reins to my poetical imagination.
The wild hallucinations of the sleepless night took
shape, vague, mystic, unsubstantial ; the power of my
suppressed talent revealed itself in light visions. I spoke
for hours, without interruption, drawing inspiration from
two pairs of eyes, which gazed at me fascinated. I felt
as if my frail body was being consumed by the burning
fire of my imagination. I lost all sense of my corporeal
presence.
Suddenly the sun rose, the myriads of islets which seem
to be swimming in the bay appeared enveloped in flames ;
the branches of the pines glowed like copper, the slender
needles yellow as sulphur ; the window-panes of the cot-
tages, dotted along the shore, sparkled like golden
mirrors ; the columns of smoke rising from the chimneys
indicated that breakfasts were being cooked ; the fishing-
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