II
I commenced by a trip to Italy. The sunlight was beneficial to me. I spent six months in wandering from Genoa to Venice, from Venice to Florence, from Florence to Rome, from Rome to Naples. Then I made a tour through Sicily, an interesting country to visit on account of its natural advantages and its monuments, relics of the Greeks and Normans. I passed over into Africa, I traversed unmolested that peaceful, yellow desert that is trod by camels, gazelles and vagabond Arabs, where the light, transparent atmosphere harbors no haunting visions, by night more than by day.
I re-entered France by way of Marseilles, and notwithstanding the gayety of the Provençals, the paler light of their country afflicted me with sadness. In returning to the continent I experienced the strange sensation of a sick man who believes that he is cured and who is warned by a dull pain that the embers of his disease are still alive.
Then I returned to Paris. I grew tired of life there at the expiration of a month. This was in the autumn, and I felt a desire to make a trip through Normandy before the setting in of winter, a country that I was unacquainted with.
I took Rouen as my starting-point, as a matter of course, and for a week I wandered in a state of disstracted, delighted enthusiasm about the streets of this middle-age city, this surprising museum of wonderful Gothic monuments.
Now, as I was picking my way one afternoon, about
