i do not exactly remember at what period i started my museum which absorbed so much of my time. just above my aunt bertha's room there was a tiny garret-chamber that i had taken possession of; the chief charm of the place was the window that opened to the west, and commanded a view of the ramparts and its old trees. the reddish spots in the distance, that broke the uniform green of the meadows, were herds of wandering oxen and cows. i had persuaded my mother to paper this attic room, and she had covered its walls with a pinkish chamois paper which is still there; she also put a what-not and some glass cases there. in these latter i placed my butterflies which i looked upon as rare specimens; i also arranged therein the birds'-nests that i had found in the woods of limoise; the shells i had gathered upon the shores of the island, and those others (brought from the colonies at an early time by unknown ancestors) that i had found in the garret at the bottom of old chests where they had lain for years and years, given over to dust and darkness.
i spent many tranquil hours in this retreat contemplating the tropical mother-of-pearl shells, and trying to image to myself the strange coasts from which they had come.
a good old great uncle of mine, who was very fond of me, encouraged me in these diversions. he was a physician, and in his youth he had lived for a long time upon the coast of africa; he had a collection of natural history specimens almost as valuable and varied as any found in a city museum. his wonderful things captivated me: the rare and exquisite shells, amulets and wooden weapons that still retained their exotic odor, with which i became so surfeited later, and indescribably beautiful butterflies under glass enchanted me.
he lived in our neighborhood and i visited him often. to get to his cabinets, it was necessary to go through his garden where thorn-apples and cacti grew abundantly, and where they kept a gray parrot, brought from gaboon, whose vocabulary consisted of words learnt from the negroes.
and when my old uncle spoke of senegal, of goree, and of guinea, the music of these names intoxicated me, and conveyed to me vaguely something of the sad languor of the dark continent. my uncle predicted that i would become a great naturalist,—but he was as mistaken as were all those others who foretold my future; indeed he struck farther from the centre than any one else; he did not understand that my liking for natural history was no more than a temporary and erratic excursion of my unformed mind; he could not know that the cold glass and the formal, rigid arrangements of dead science had not power to hold me for long.
