{"id":"01KG8AN3WY3T8YW9W3D1FHQDQF","cid":"bafkreid3wifbjlkz2zpbn3dbmsom3thc3kpey4niszrnzj3dl2cdadv44u","type":"chunk","properties":{"end_line":5161,"extracted_at":"2026-01-30T20:48:52.918Z","extracted_by":"structure-extraction-lambda","label":"Chunk 1","source_file":"01KG89J1JSYKSGCE149MH9HF6A","start_line":5115,"text":"III.\r\n\r\n\"I never knew a mortal mother. The farthest stretch of my life's memory\r\ncan not recall one single feature of such a face. If, indeed, mother of\r\nmine hath lived, she is long gone, and cast no shadow on the ground she\r\ntrod. Pierre, the lips that do now speak to thee, never touched a\r\nwoman's breast; I seem not of woman born. My first dim life-thoughts\r\ncluster round an old, half-ruinous house in some region, for which I now\r\nhave no chart to seek it out. If such a spot did ever really exist, that\r\ntoo seems to have been withdrawn from all the remainder of the earth. It\r\nwas a wild, dark house, planted in the midst of a round, cleared,\r\ndeeply-sloping space, scooped out of the middle of deep stunted pine\r\nwoods. Ever I shrunk at evening from peeping out of my window, lest the\r\nghostly pines should steal near to me, and reach out their grim arms to\r\nsnatch me into their horrid shadows. In summer the forest unceasingly\r\nhummed with unconjecturable voices of unknown birds and beasts. In\r\nwinter its deep snows were traced like any paper map, with dotting\r\nnight-tracks of four-footed creatures, that, even to the sun, were never\r\nvisible, and never were seen by man at all. In the round open space the\r\ndark house stood, without one single green twig or leaf to shelter it;\r\nshadeless and shelterless in the heart of shade and shelter. Some of the\r\nwindows were rudely boarded up, with boards nailed straight up and down;\r\nand those rooms were utterly empty, and never were entered, though they\r\nwere doorless. But often, from the echoing corridor, I gazed into them\r\nwith fear; for the great fire-places were all in ruins; the lower tier\r\nof back-stones were burnt into one white, common crumbling; and the\r\nblack bricks above had fallen upon the hearths, heaped here and there\r\nwith the still falling soot of long-extinguished fires. Every\r\nhearth-stone in that house had one long crack through it; every floor\r\ndrooped at the corners; and outside, the whole base of the house, where\r\nit rested on the low foundation of greenish stones, was strewn with\r\ndull, yellow molderings of the rotting sills. No name; no scrawled or\r\nwritten thing; no book, was in the house; no one memorial speaking of\r\nits former occupants. It was dumb as death. No grave-stone, or mound, or\r\nany little hillock around the house, betrayed any past burials of man or\r\nchild. And thus, with no trace then to me of its past history, thus it\r\nhath now entirely departed and perished from my slightest knowledge as\r\nto where that house so stood, or in what region it so stood. None other\r\nhouse like it have I ever seen. But once I saw plates of the outside of\r\nFrench chateaux which powerfully recalled its dim image to me,\r\nespecially the two rows of small dormer windows projecting from the\r\ninverted hopper-roof. But that house was of wood, and these of stone.\r\nStill, sometimes I think that house was not in this country, but\r\nsomewhere in Europe; perhaps in France; but it is all bewildering to me;\r\nand so you must not start at me, for I can not but talk wildly upon so\r\nwild a theme.\r\n\r","title":"Chunk 1"},"relationships":[{"peer":"01KG8AKSYXW4P2PJ2ZT3S17FHA","peer_type":"section","predicate":"in"},{"peer":"01KG89J1JSYKSGCE149MH9HF6A","peer_type":"file","predicate":"extractedFrom"},{"peer":"01KG89HMDZKNY753EZE1CJ8HZW","peer_type":"collection","predicate":"collection"},{"peer":"01KG8AN3X4YH668X9F772HXECQ","peer_type":"chunk","predicate":"next"}],"ver":2,"created_at":"2026-01-30T20:48:59.294Z","ts":"2026-01-30T20:49:17.371Z","edited_by":{"method":"manual","user_id":"01KFF0H3YRP9ZSM033AM0QJ47H"}}