[Pg 31]

"Such is my habit. I work out the whole scene in my head first of all, down to the smallest details, so that when I sit down it is a mere mechanical a-b-c sort of business."

"Then according to that, when you are marching with rapid strides up and down that long path, you neither hear nor see anything?"

"Pardon me, I see grass, trees, flowers, birds, stumps of trees, and huts of reeds overgrown with brambles. Amongst all these I weave my thoughts like the meshes of a spider's web. And I hear, too. I hear the piping of the yellow-hammer, the twittering of the titmouse, the notes of the horn from distant ships, the humming of the gnats, and they all have something to whisper to me, something to tell me. A buzzing wasp lends wings to my imagination; but if I meet a human face, the whole thing flies out of my thoughts, and a single 'your humble servant' will dissolve utterly my fata Morgana, until I turn back and reconstruct the ends of my spider's-web among the freshly-discovered reed-built huts, tree-trunks and trailing flowers, when the well-known voices of the dwellers in the wilderness bring back to me again my scattered ideas; then I retreat into the little wooden summer-house in our garden, and there, disturbed by nobody, I transfer to paper the images which stand before my mind."

And Bessy, contrary to my expectation, didn't[Pg 32] laugh at this elucidation. On the contrary, she had grown quite serious. The expression of her eyes now resembled the expression which I had given them in her portrait.

[Pg 32]

"And this gives you pleasure?" she whispered. "It is just as if a man were to set off dreaming after taking care beforehand that all his dreams should turn out beautiful."

"Mr. Muki Bagotay," announced the footman.

I took up my hat. I could not endure that fellow. He had already enjoyed everything in reality which existed for me only in imagination....

The little wooden hut there in the orchard on the Danubian islet (whether it is still there I know not) was the most splendid palace in which I ever dwelt. 'Twas there I wrote my first romance. It is true that it had to put up with a lot of criticism, that first romance. What, indeed, did a young mind which knew nothing of men or of the world understand about romance writing? And yet I loved my first work, just as much as a man loves his first-born, though it may be deformed by all sorts of physical and 

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