There was, for instance, the fact that no one felt himself to be the owner of the album, not even Rudolph, who acted more like its servant, an unwilling and lazy servant in the bond of duty. Sometimes envy would flood his heart with bitterness. He rebelled inwardly against the role of keeper of a treasure that did not really belong to him. He looked with envy on the reflection of distant worlds that flooded my face with a gamut of color. Only in that reflection did he notice the glow of these pages. His own feelings were not really engaged.

X

I once saw a prestidigitator. He stood in the center of the stage, slim and visible to everybody, and demonstrated his top hat, showing its empty white bottom. Thus having assured us that his art was above suspicion of fraudulent manipulation, he traced with his wand a complicated magic sign and at once, with exaggerated precision and openness, began to produce from the top hat paper strips, colored ribbons by the foot, by the yard, finally by the mile. The room filled with the rustling mass of color, became bright from the heaps of light tissue, while the artist still pulled at the endless weft, despite the spectators' protests, their cries of ecstasy and spasmodic sobs until it became clear that all this effort was nothing to him, that he was drawing this plenty, not from his own, but from supernatural resources that had been opened to him and that were beyond human measures and calculations.

But some people who could perceive the real sense of this demonstration went home deep in thought and enchanted, having had a glimpse of the truth that God is boundless.

XI

Now perhaps is the time for drawing a parallel between Alexander the Great and my modest self. Alexander was susceptible to the aroma of countries. His nostrils anticipated untold possibilities. He was one of those men on whose head God lays His hand while they are asleep so that they get to know what they don't know, so that they are filled with intuitions and conjectures, while the reflections of distant worlds pass across their closed eyelids. Alexander, however, took divine allusions too literally. As a man of action—that is to say, of a shallow spirit— he interpreted his mission as that of conqueror of the world. He felt as unfulfilled as I was, his breast heaved with the same kind of sighs, and he hungered after ever new horizons and landscapes. There was no one who could point out his mistake. Not even Aristotle could understand him. Thus, although he had conquered the whole world, he died disappointed, doubting the God who kept eluding him and doubting God's miracles. His likeness adorned the coins and seals of many lands. In the end, he became the Franz Joseph of his age.

XII

I should like to give the reader at least an approximate idea of that album in which the events of that spring were adumbrated, then finally arranged. An indescribable, alarming wind blew through the avenue of these stamps, the decorated street of crests and standards, and unfurled these emblems in an ominous silence, under the shadow of clouds that loomed threateningly over the horizon. Then the first heralds appeared in the empty street, in dress uniforms with red brassards, perspiring, perplexed, full of the sense of their mission. They gestured silently, preoccupied and solemn, the street immediately darkened from the advancing procession, and all the side streets were obscured by the steps of the demonstrating throngs. It was an enormous manifestation of countries, a universal May Day, a march-past of the world. The world was demonstrating with thousands of hands raised as for an oath, it averred in a thousand voices that it was not behind Franz Joseph but behind somebody infinitely greater. The demonstration was bathed in a pale red, almost pink light, the liberating color of enthusiasm. From Santo Domingo, from San Salvador, from Florida came hot and panting delegations, clothed in raspberry red, who waved cherry pink bowler hats from which chattering goldfinches escaped in twos and threes. Happy breezes sharpened the glare of trumpets, brushed softly against the surface of the instruments, and brought forth tiny sparks of electricity. In spite of the large numbers taking part in the march-past, everything was orderly, the enormous parade unfolded itself in silence and according to plan. There were moments when the flags, waving violently from balconies, writhing in amaranthine spasms, in violent silent flutters, in frustrated bursts of enthusiasm, became still as for a roll call: the whole street then turned red and full of a silent threat, while in the darkened distance the carefully counted salvoes of artillery resounded dully, all forty-nine of them in the dusk-filled air.

And then the horizon suddenly clouded over as before a spring storm, with only the instruments of the bands brassily shining, and in the silence one could hear the murmur of the darkening sky, the rustle of distant spaces, while from nearby gardens the scent of bird cherry floated in concentrated doses and dissolved imperceptibly in the air.

XIII

One day toward the end of April the morning was warm and gray; people walking in the streets and looking ahead did not notice that the trees in the park were splitting in many places and showing sweet, festering wounds.

Enmeshed in the black net of tree branches, the gray, sultry sky lay heavily on human shoulders.