"I liked to see the short-lived plant-life in the gutters--poor weeds
that a storm soon washed away. I studied the mosses, with their colors
revived by showers, or transformed by the sun into a brown velvet that
fitfully caught the light. Such things as these formed my recreations
--the passing poetic moods of daylight, the melancholy mists, sudden
gleams of sunlight, the silence and the magic of night, the mysteries
of dawn, the smoke wreaths from each chimney; every chance event, in
fact, in my curious world became familiar to me. I came to love this
prison of my own choosing. This level Parisian prairie of roofs,
beneath which lay populous abysses, suited my humor, and harmonized
with my thoughts.
"Sudden descents into the world from the divine height of scientific
meditation are very exhausting; and, besides, I had apprehended
perfectly the bare life of the cloister. When I made up my mind to
carry out this new plan of life, I looked for quarters in the most
out-of-the-way parts of Paris. One evening, as I returned home to the
Rue des Cordiers from the Place de l'Estrapade, I saw a girl of
fourteen playing with a battledore at the corner of the Rue de Cluny,
her winsome ways and laughter amused the neighbors.
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