No matter what happens, it will always be unimportant. Logical sequences are broken; we have left the salutary paths. Let us remember the detached islands; they floated like abandoned ships, no longer linked to the world. That is the saddest thing that can happen. One can not start all over when futility lies ahead. We are completely lost. We are more miserable by far than my inept words can suggest to you; more miserable by far than we are aware, for the apathy that engulfs us is beginning to dull our souls. I have spoken too long and said too much. Disordered things require incoherent statements; I shall conclude with a few alliterations.” Letting my voice fall suddenly until it was only a murmur, I whispered this cadence:

“… The grasshopper of the sands will sing.”

All those sitting on the bank had heard me out; but my peroration seemed to them incongruous and they shook with undissimulated laughter; I had hoped that it would awaken us from our torpor.* Ellis had understood nothing; I felt suddenly irritated but showed no sign of it. She opened wide her inquisitive eyes; she was waiting for me to continue.

“I have finished, dear Ellis,” I said. “Let’s walk through the grass. You are sweet and delightful today. The air will be good for you.” * *

I think it would be wearisome to recount our stroll; I prefer to speak of a cave which we entered but could not explore to any great extent because it was partially filled with stagnant water; we could nevertheless see high vaults shrouded in darkness; galleries that seemed endless; places where the walls of the caverns arched to form a ceiling, lethargic bats hung like fruit. I plucked one for Ellis, who had not yet seen any of them. The best part about the cave was that, after we left its oppressive gloom, the light outside seemed somewhat less sad. It was in the cave that Ellis contracted marsh-fever and I first had terrifying doubts about her identity.

While the others were getting back into the boat that evening, Ydier, Nathanaël and I, feeling vaguely once more a desire to live, started inland. Then we had a strange adventure whose mysteriousness still torments us, for it was unique and unrelated to anything else that occurred during our voyage.

Night had fallen; the wind swept across the rushes in the moors; fires hovered over the peat-bogs; afraid of the quagmires, we walked slowly. A tinkling sound broke the silence and caused us to stop, surprised. Like a vaporous form, a white woman emerged, floated ethereally, rose above the marsh; she shook a chalice-like bell which she held in her hand. Our first impulse was to flee; then, somewhat reassured by her ethereality, we were about to call out to her when she began to disintegrate into shapeless mist, either higher or more distant, and the tinkling sound began to fade away; but it lingered still, and we were beginning to think that fatigue had made us the victims of some illusion when, walking onward, we heard it nearer, again clear, skimming the ground, at times uncertain, alternately blatant and hesitant, then plaintive, imploring; bending down in the darkness for a better view, we found a poor lamb lost on the moor, bewildered, its wool dampened by the dark. Around its neck was the little bell. We lifted up the lamb that had gone astray and removed its bell.

But once again a noise broke the stillness and slowly there emerged from the slough a woman who wore a veil resembling a mortuary shroud, her gray veil clung like mist to the rush-bed. The drooping lily inclined its chalice earthward; its sounds spilled out like seeds. And, as she fled, I saw her stoop down near a recess in the darkness and hang her lily like a bell from the neck of a waiting lamb. We found the lamb on the plain.

A third form appeared; sweat covered her face; behind her floated her train, like a tattered cloth, over the leaves of the rushes. And I saw her hold out the lily as she disintegrated and leave the disconsolate lamb with the bell which her dissolving hand had tied to its wool.

In the same way twelve women appeared; we found the lambs afterwards and, like shepherds without crooks, used our hands to guide the flock through the night along unknown paths, between clumps of rushes and off-shoots of ranunculuses.

When we returned to the boat, dawn was beginning to glow. Ellis was in some pain and slightly delirious. I noticed that day, for the first time I think, that her hair was completely blond; blond, nothing more.

The felucca began once more to move up the fluvial waters; long days passed in this way, but they were too monotonous to relate. The banks were always so alike that we seemed not to be making any headway. The stream slowed imperceptibly, stopped, and we rowed through stagnant water, deep and dark.