The Astonishing Life of Octavian Nothing I. [antikvár]

Iwas raised in a gaunt house with a garden; my earUest recollections are of floating hghts in the apple-trees.I recall, in the orchard behind the house, orbs of flames rising through the black boughs and branches; they chmbed, spirit-ous, and flickered out; my mother squeezed my hand with delight. We stood near the door to the ice-chamber.By the well, servants lit bubbles of gas on fire, clad in frock-coats of asbestos.Around the orchard and gardens stood a wall of some height, designed to repel the glance of idle curiosity and to keep us all from slipping away and running for freedom; though that, of course, I did not yet understand.How doth all that seeks to rise burn itself to nothing.