But how, it may be asked, seeing that there must have been a shrill piping of birds and brawling of water among the stones, how could Mademoiselle's delicate ear endure _that_ racket? Perhaps it is because the birds being loose in the hollow of space, it carried away into its vacancy their cries. It is, too, the harsh, rather than the shrill, that frets me. As for the noise of the water, it was so full and limpid, yet made up of such infinitely entangled chimings and drummings, that it would lull me into a kind of trance, until to a strange eye I must have appeared like a lifeless waxen mammet on my stone.
What may wholly have been another childish fancy was that apart from the silvery darting flies and the rainbow-coloured motes in the sunbeams, fine and airy invisible shapes seemed to haunt and hover around me when all was still. Most of my fellow creatures to my young nose had an odour a good deal denser than the fainter scented flowers, and I can fancy such a fog, if intensified, would be distressing to beings so bodiless and rare. Whereas the air I disturbed and infected with my presence can have been of but shallow volume.
Fairies I never saw--I had a kind of fear and distaste for them even in books. Nor for that matter--perhaps because the stream here was too tumbling and opaque--a kingfisher. But whatever other company may have been mine, I had the clouds and the water and the insects and the stones--while pimpernel, mousetail, tormentil, the wild strawberry, the feathery grasses seemed to have been made expressly for my delight. Ego-centric Midget that I was!
Not that in an existence so passive riddles never came my way. As one morning I brushed past a bush of lads' love (or maidens' ruin, as some call it), its fragrance sweeping me from top to toe, I stumbled on the carcass of a young mole. Curiosity vanquished the first gulp of horror. Holding my breath, with a stick I slowly edged it up in the dust and surveyed the white heaving nest of maggots in its belly with a peculiar and absorbed recognition. "Ah, ha!" a voice cried within me, "so this is what is in wait; this is how things are"; and I stooped with lips drawn back over my teeth to examine the stinking mystery more closely. That was a lesson I have never unlearned.