But these he shirked where possible, as he had shirked his lessons in earlier days.
Now it happened that I was walking one spring morning--it was in May of that year '44 of which I am now writing--on the upper of the three spacious terraces that formed the castle garden.

It was but an indifferently tended place, and yet perhaps the more agreeable on that account, since Nature had been allowed to have her prodigal, luxuriant way.

It is true that the great boxwood hedges needed trimming, and that weeds were sprouting between the stones of the flights of steps that led from terrace to terrace; but the place was gay and fragrant with wild blossoms, and the great trees afforded generous shade, and the long rank grass beneath them made a pleasant couch to lie on during the heat of the day in summer.

The lowest terrace of all was in better case.

It was a well-planted and well-tended orchard, where I got many a colic in my earlier days from a gluttony of figs and peaches whose complete ripening I was too impatient to await.
I walked there, then, one morning quite early on the upper terrace immediately under the castle wall, and alternately I read from the De Civitate Dei which I had brought with me, alternately mused upon the matter of my reading.