There are two races of us here on earth. There are those who feel the need of their fellow-men, who find the company of others a distraction and a peaceful, soothing influence, and are exasperated, exhausted, crushed by solitude as they would be by ascending a terrible glacier or crossing a desert; and again there are those whom the companionship of others serves to weary, nauseate, incommode and tire to death, while isolation tends to calm and refresh them, and bathe them in repose, in the independence and the dreamland of their fancy.
In a word, there is a normal psychical phenomenon in it. Some are formed to live the outer life, others to live the inner life. For myself, my interest in external objects is shortlived and soon exhausted, and the moment that it reaches its limits I am conscious of an intolerable wretchedness in all my being, physical and mental.
From this it has resulted that I am deeply attached, that I was deeply attached, to inanimate objects that assume in my eyes the importance of living beings, and that my house is, or was, a world where I lived an active and solitary life in the midst of objects, furniture, familiar bibelots, that were as sympathetic to my eyes as human countenances. I had filled the house with those things little by little, and had made it beautiful, and within its walls I experienced content and satisfaction; I was very happy, as one is in the arms of a loving woman whose accustomed caress has become a calm and gentle portion of our existence.
I had built this house in a handsome garden which secluded it from the public roads, and close to the gate
