This is certainly the same countryside. The same rustic house that belonged to my parents: the very room where above the doors reside reddening pastoral scenes, coats of arms, lions. One dines in a hall filled with candles and wines and rustic wainscoting. The table is very large. And the servants! There were many, as many as I had recalled. --And there was even one of my old friends who'd stopped by, a priest, and dressed like one: it allowed him greater freedom. I remember his crimson room, with yellow paper windowpanes: and his books, all hidden away, that had been soaked by the sea.
   I was abandoned, in this endless country house; I read in the kitchen drying my muddy clothes in front of my hosts' parlor conversations: moved to death by morning's murmuring milk and the late century's night.
    I was in a very dark room: what was I doing? A servant drew close: I can tell you she was a little dog, however pretty, and, it seemed to me, possessing an inexpressible maternal nobility: pure, familiar, utterly charming! She pinched my arm.
    I don't even remember her face very well anymore: this isn't so that I might manage to remember her arm, whose skin I rolled between my fingers; nor her mouth, which my own seized upon like a desperate little wave, endlessly digging for something within. I backed her into a basket filled with cushions and boat canvas in a dark corner. All I remember now are her white lace panties.
    Then, such despair! The barrier shifted, somehow became the shadows of trees, and I sank beneath the amorous sadness of night.