An arguing Voice never ceased to remonstrate
within me, nor left me peace, and the curse of unborn hosts appeared to
menace me. To strengthen my fixity I would often overwhelm myself, and
her, with muttered opprobriums, calling myself 'convict,' her
'lady-bird'; asking what manner of man was I that I should dare so great
a thing; and as for her, what was she to be the Mother of a world?--a
versatile butterfly with a woman's brow! And continually now in my
fiercer moods I was meditating either my death--or hers.
Ah, but the butterfly did not let me forget her brow! To the south-west
of Villeneuve, between the forest and the river is a well-grown gentian
field, and returning from round St. Gingolph to the Chateau one day in
the third month after an absence of three days, I saw, as I turned a
corner in the descent of the mountain, some object floating in the air
above the field. Never was I more startled, and, above all, perplexed:
for, beside the object soaring there like a great butterfly, I could see
nothing to account for it.
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