I do not exactly remember at what period I started my museum which absorbed so much of my time.

Egypt, the Egypt of antiquity, at a later time, exercised a mysterious fascination over me. I recognized a picture of it immediately, without hesitation and astonishment, in an illustrated magazine.

I do not exactly remember at what period I started my museum which absorbed so much of my time.

It seems to me that it will be very wearisome to be a man.

Through the study of fossils I had already been initiated into the mysteries of prehistoric creations.

I recall feeling an almost delicious terror when one day I found myself alone in the midst of tall June grasses that grew high as my head. But here the secret working of self consciousness is almost too entangled with the things of the past for me to explain it.

Unlike most other children, - especially unlike those of today - who are eager to become men and women as speedily as possible, I had a terror of growing up, which became more and more accentuated as I grew older.