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forming the first epoch of my life--and a condition of shadow and doubt,
appertaining to the present, and to the recollection of what constitutes
the second great era of my being. Therefore, what I shall tell of the
earlier period, believe; and to what I may relate of the later time,
give only such credit as may seem due, or doubt it altogether, or, if
doubt it ye cannot, then play unto its riddle the Oedipus.
She whom I loved in youth, and of whom I now pen calmly and distinctly
these remembrances, was the sole daughter of the only sister of my
mother long departed. Eleonora was the name of my cousin. We had
always dwelled together, beneath a tropical sun, in the Valley of the
Many-Colored Grass. No unguided footstep ever came upon that vale; for
it lay away up among a range of giant hills that hung beetling around
about it, shutting out the sunlight from its sweetest recesses. No path
was trodden in its vicinity; and, to reach our happy home, there was
need of putting back, with force, the foliage of many thousands of
forest trees, and of crushing to death the glories of many millions of
fragrant flowers. Thus it was that we lived all alone, knowing nothing
of the world without the valley--I, and my cousin, and her mother.
From the dim regions beyond the mountains at the upper end of our
encircled domain, there crept out a narrow and deep river, brighter than
all save the eyes of Eleonora; and, winding stealthily about in mazy
courses, it passed away, at length, through a shadowy gorge, among hills
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