Most of the things I have related about my childhood I have heard from others. Frequently the things that have been told me and my own impressions get mixed up one with another, so that I am sometimes unable to distinguish between the two.

The whole of my life from the very moment of my birth until my present old age, makes me think of a plain enveloped in a thick fog. Everything is hidden from view, when all at once the mist lifts itself in places, disclosing tiny little islands des éclaircies on which people and objects can be distinguished, quite disconnected with one another, surrounded by an impenetrable veil of mist.

In my childhood these éclaircies