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body that I might hold, and caress and love: in my strange hallucination, I caressed myself, with the phantasy that I was attaching myself to another.
Through the windows, far away one could see the trees, the green meadows, and I felt tempted to go out and roll in the grass, or to climb up high in the branches. Then I looked at the sky and thought I should like to fly in the air, to mingle with the vapours, with the clouds, the blue of the ether and the angels.
I felt I should go mad: the blood rushing hotly to my head. No longer knowing what I was doing, I had thrown myself on the sofa and seizing bolsters and cushions, held one tight between my fat young thighs and another in my arms. This one I kissed and caressed, I think I even wasted smiles on it, I was so intoxicated by the tumult of my newly awakened senses.
All at once I stopped, I shuddered, I fancied that I was dissolving into liquid love. "Ah! my Goodness, ah!" I cried. And I got up terribly frightened at myself, I was quite wet through down below.
Not being able to understand in the least what had really happened, I thought I had hurt myself in some way, that I was
