branches ; I love the panorama I saw from my window in the study, when, at six o’clock in the morning, our eyelids still heavy with sleep, they brought us there to learn lessons and write compositions. I remember often having done nothing near the little beloved morning window but look at the mountains and at the distant sea soft, blue and divine; it was so distant that it seemed mingling with the sky and I could not help looking at both azures and write warm stupid poetry that teachers caught in order to tear into pieces, for I was not doing my task, they said.
Ô Nature, Nature! Thou art life for me and I am thine, heart and soul! I hate towns where manners are studied, words and looks conventional, smiles hypocritical, houses small and narrow; where the smoky air is but the breath of thousands of chimneys and thousands of persons.
Ah! that I could be a shepherd spending my days in jumping with my sheep and singing with the birds; and, in the evening when tired, I should lie under some tree and tune my shepherd’s pipe as David, when young, used to do in the romantic old fields of Beit-Sahour…
Above all, I love silence. Not the shy silence of ordinary mediocre natures, but that of beautiful high souls… The silence, expressive and eloquent, that
