I had divided it for that purpose into small squares, meaning to go through them one after another in each season of the year.  At the end of two or three hours I used to return laden with an ample harvest, a provision for amusing myself after dinner indoors, in case of rain.  I spent the rest of the morning in going with the steward, his wife, and Theresa, to see the labourers and the harvesting, and I generally set to work along with them; many a time when people from Berne came to see me, they found me perched on a high tree, with a bag fastened round my waist; I kept filling it with fruit and then let it down to the ground with a rope.  The exercise I had taken in the morning and the good humour that always comes from exercise, made the repose of dinner vastly pleasant to me.  But if dinner was kept up too long, and fine weather invited me forth, I could not wait, but was speedily off to throw myself all alone into a boat, which, when the water was smooth enough, I used to pull out to the middle of the lake.  There, stretched at full length in the boat’s bottom, with my eyes turned up to the sky, I let myself float slowly hither and thither as the water listed, sometimes for hours together, plunged in a thousand confused delicious musings, which, though they had no fixed nor constant object, were not the less on that account a hundred times dearer to me than all that I had found sweetest in what they call the pleasures of life.  Often warned by the going down of the sun that it was time to return, I found myself so far from the island that I was forced to row with all my might to get in before it was pitch dark.  At other times, instead of losing myself in the midst of the waters, I had a fancy to coast along the green shores of the island, where the clear waters and cool shadows tempted me to bathe.  But one of my most frequent expeditions was from the larger island to the less; there I disembarked and spent my afternoon, sometimes in mimic rambles among wild elders, persicaries, willows, and shrubs of every species, sometimes settling myself on the top of a sandy knoll, covered with turf, wild thyme, flowers, even sainfoin and trefoil that had most likely been sown there in old days, making excellent quarters for rabbits.  They might multiply in peace without either fearing anything or harming anything.  I spoke of this to the steward.  He at once had male and female rabbits brought from Neuchatel, and we went in high state, his wife, one of his sisters, Theresa, and I, to settle them in the little islet.  The foundation of our colony was a feast-day.  The pilot of the Argonauts was not prouder than I, as I bore my company and the rabbits in triumph from our island to the smaller one....

When the lake was too rough for me to sail, I spent my afternoon in going up and down the island, gathering plants to right and left; seating myself now in smiling lonely nooks to dream at my ease, now on little terraces and knolls,