On what point, do you think? On keeping up
the external appearance, and the manners, of well-being. I have no energy
left for anything else; and even this effort quite exhausts me. Art and
politics! What, in the name of heaven, do I care for art and politics,
with the knife at my throat? I only utilize these things; yes, I utilize
them for conversational purposes, in order to deceive others as to my
true, incessant and miserable preoccupations. Laughable, is it not? Why
don't you smile, Monsieur--you, who have never known the bitterness?"
We were crossing the broad Oued Baiesh, a stretch of yellow sand and
stones. To obviate damage by sudden floods, the French have covered this
tract of the road with a coating of asphalt; but the busy life here, the
droves of camels and sheep, the Arab folk laughing over their laundry-work
in the shallow streamlet that trickles through the waste--all these things
were gone for the moment.
But for the torn line of Gafsa palms that confronted us on the other side
of the river-bed, we might have been in the veriest wilderness. Although
the wind was lulled, petulant little pillars of sand still arose here and
there among the boulders, and sank down again, as if exhausted; the
descending sun had emerged, a lurid disk, framed in a sulphureous halo
that melted imperceptibly into the gold of the west.
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