For three days we watched the steep banks in silence; then the new terrains that we had passed through provided us with another opportunity to exchange comments.

The sky was pale, the countryside discolored. Along the glaucous banks lined with green plants and ashes were placid storks which had returned from their quests. Ellis thought that their feet were disproportionate; that is how I found out about her disturbing superficiality; but I said nothing to her about her cherry-colored umbrella in the tearful setting, reserving the question of imperfections for subsequent conversations.

The uninspiring, verdigris-encrusted banks between which we were still rowing, so flat, so calm, so confining, so consistently the same, offered nothing to tempt us to stop our monotonous escapade at one point rather than another. The sole episode in our rash adventure was the boat on the calm stream, imprisoned between the banks, and since it kept moving along with us, we remained in it simply because we did not know where to disembark. And when one evening we finally did set foot on an indifferent bank, it was rather because of the hour, because of the approach of twilight.

A tattered mist hovered over the bleak water and clung to the reeds along the banks. We decided to spend the night on the sward; Ellis had to stay in the boat; she wrapped herself in her shawl because of the humidity, placed her vanity case under her head, and fell asleep among the reeds bruised by the anchored boat.

After a dreamless night came a cheerless awakening; there was no red in the sky, which was brightened only in the morning by a sad and chilling dawn. The light was so faint that we were still expecting the dawn when we glimpsed the sun, which had already risen, behind a cloud. We rejoined Ellis; she was sitting in the felucca, reading the Theodicy. Irritated I took the book from her; the others remained silent; there was a painful moment of consternation; and since our course was unsure and our destinies were no longer linked by a common goal, our wills diverged and each of us made his own way inland.

I did not have the heart to go far; only toward a little grove of beech trees. But I did not even reach the grove and threw myself instead into the shadow of the first shub; since I was no longer in view of the others, and since I felt my strength ebbing away and the past returning, I put my head in my hands and cried wretchedly.

Evening fell on the pimpernel-spotted prairie; then I said a little prayer, stood up and returned to the abandoned boat.

Ellis in the boat was reading the Treatise on Contingency; exasperated, I wrenched the book from her hands, threw it into the river.

“Don’t you know, wretched Ellis,” I shouted, “that books are temptation? And our goal was glorious actions.…”

“Glorious?” said Ellis, looking at the uninspiring plain.

“Oh! I know that it doesn’t seem that way; I know everything that you can say. Silence! Silence!” On the verge of tears, I hid my face from her and stared at the water in the stream.

My companions returned one by one, and when all of us had reassembled in the boat, each felt so acutely the desire of all that no one dared ask whether the others had seen nothing; instead, propriety caused each to make a vain statement to disguise the inanity of his vision:

“I saw, I saw,” said Aguisel, “rows of dwarf birches on a clay knoll.”

“As for me,” said Eric, “on a sandy plain I saw grasshoppers feeding on bitter grass.”

“And you, Urien?” said Axel.

“A pimpernel-spotted field.”

“Morgain?”

“Forests of blue pines near the seashore.”

“Ydier?”

“Some abandoned quarries…”

And since the hour was late and we had lost interest in the discussion, we fell asleep.

The next day I awoke late; all the others had already risen, and I saw them sitting on the shore. They were all reading. Ellis had passed out some brochures on ethics. I grabbed her vanity case; in it were three memorandum-books, The Life of Franklin, a little treatise on temperate climates, and Desjardins’ Present Duty. Even as I searched the vanity case, I was preparing an apostrophe; when everything was ready, I threw down the case. It sank in the river. Two huge tears ran down Ellis’ cheeks. Not because I was moved but because I sensed our common misery, my irritation suddenly vanished and censure gave way to compassion.

“We are indeed miserable,” I cried out. “So far our voyage has been a failure. What does our cheerless plain mean at this moment in our history? Or what is the significance of our being on the plain? Any suspicion of futility will torment our hearts and allow their virtue to be diffused. Lord! In the face of futility, we shall no longer have either faith or courage. Now we are going to weaken—or must we embrace piety? We have cherished our pride, and our nobility has suffered from the asperity of our victories. Our virtue derives solely from resistance; but around us now everything gives way, everything crumbles, and we are no longer aware of our courage. Our tranquil past resurges in us like a regret. Majestic and profound night of wild ecstasy! Texts of truth where often there flickered a metaphysical flame! Algebras and theodicies, studies! We had left you for something else. Oh, for something else indeed! We set out one morning because we had learned through study that we must manifest our essence; we went off into the world in search of revealing actions, knowing nothing of the tenebrous valley that connected the lofty room where we dreamed to the world where men lived—the valley so terrible and so mysterious that I expected death there, so tenebrous that my eyes mistook the waves for lights when finally I stood before the long-sought sea. Afterwards we saw beaches, profuse vegetation, gardens traversed by warm streams, palaces, imposing terraces whose memory causes despair; we saw every smile, heard every plea, and still we resisted; not even Queen Haïatalnefus, deceitful and perfumed, could overcome our resistance. We were preserving ourselves for something else. Through a calculated—indeed, I ought to say esthetic—progression, our courage and desire grew with our resistance; and we were anticipating a climactic event. Now our boat is going to founder in the mire. Oh! Ours is truly a history of failure, abject failure. What can happen next? Nothing matters to us, such is the pall cast on the future by our boredom; our noble souls will succumb to disinterest in their task.