brain muddled, her heart vacillating like a little smoky flame beaten by the wind; and far from resisting, she looked for added opportunities to plunge deeper into suffering, relishing with a sort of perverted exultation the frightful delights of her self-annihilation.
Dissatisfied with the management of his domestic affairs, my father at length decided to take an interest in the progress of my mother's illness, which passed his understanding. He had the hardest time in the world to make mother accept the idea of going to Paris to consult the "princes of science" as he put it. It was a sorry trip. Of the three celebrated physicians to whom he took her, the first declared that my mother was anæmic and prescribed a strengthening diet; the second diagnosed that she was affected with nervous rheumatism and prescribed a debilitating regimen; the third one found that "it was nothing" and recommended mental tranquility.
No one saw clearly into her soul. She herself did not know it. Obsessed with the cruel memory to which she attributed all her misfortunes, she could not unravel with clearness all that stirred obscurely in the innermost depths of her being, nor understand the vague passions, the imprisoned aspirations, the captive dreams which had accumulated in her since childhood. She was like a nestling bird that, without realizing the obscure and nostalgic forces which drew it toward heaven of which it has no knowledge, crushes its head and maims its wings against the cage bars. Instead of craving death as she thought she was, her soul within her, just like that bird that hungered for the unknown skies, hungered for life radiant with tenderness, filled with love; and just like that bird, was dying from this unassuaged hunger. As a child, she gave herself entirely, with all the exaggerations of her fervid nature, to the love for material
