in which love, by outstripping the requisite age for love, surpassed the generous limits of its own boundaries, had plunged him far back among solitudes where he was lord and master. He wandered past a grotto - a slung hammock hollowed by a naked form and the embers of a wood fire flickering at ground level - before the power of divination deserted him and the wings of his imagination were clipped, and he plummeted headlong down till he touched the cushioned depths of the deepest sleep.
Colette - Le Blé en Herbe, 1923
