It was the same emotion, greatly intensified, that I had when I listened, of winter evenings, to the old cake vendor, and heard her voice die away into those far-off squalid streets near the harbor.

I experienced an unexpected anguish very difficult to define in words.

I had a vague impression, which was the cause of my suffering, that I was imprisoned; and for the moment, I thought that my liking for dry classifications and nature study shut me away from the little boys of every age who were in the streets below mingling with the sailors, more childish than they, who tricked out in dreadful masks ran and frollicked and sang coarse songs.

It goes without saying that I had no desire to be one of them; the very idea of jostling against them filled me with distaste, and I disdained their rude sport.

And I sincerely felt that it was better for me to be where I was, occupied with putting the many-colored family of the Purpura and the twenty-three varieties of the Gastropoda in order.
But nevertheless the gay and merry people in the street troubled me strangely.