We wanted to take him to the ship, but he crouched on the sand and resumed his calm meditation.

We departed. The walk through this island had given us strength, and when the Orion again set sail, we gazed upon the open sea ahead of us and felt a tremor in our hearts.

We did not bathe that day.

* Narcissus (1891), written to defend the doctrine of Symbolism, depicts Narcissus in the classical pose—bending over the water and viewing not only his own image but the moving panorama of life.

* Gide felt a strong attraction, partly sexual and partly intellectual, to the people with whom he had no common intellectual or economic ties, yet was never able to mingle easily with them. His predilection for the moslem culture caused him to travel outside France on various occasions.

* There is much to support the theory that for Gide art was a means of avoiding painful reality. As a child and as a writer he preferred pleasurable fantasies to painful realities.

* Gide here added a footnote—the simple word Novalis. Fried-rich Leopold, Freiherr von Hardenberg (1772-1801), was a pioneer of the Romantic movement. His long unfinished Heinrich von Ofterdingen, which relates a hero’s quest for the mysterious blue flower is an allegory of the writer’s life.

VII

For the seventh time the ship stopped. This island where we disembarked full of hope and from which we were not to depart until long thereafter, was for many the end of the voyage. Those of us who continued onward, leaving behind us so many dead companions and hopes, were never again to see the splendid lights which had previously roused us. But sailing aimlessly under a morose sky, we regretted the town—beautiful in spite of all its sensuality—the royal town, the palaces of Haïatalnefus with their terraces that frightened us when we walked on them because their sheer beauty made them unsafe. Terraces! Merciful Bactrian terraces bathed in morning sunshine! Hanging gardens, gardens with a view of the sea! Palaces no longer seen but still longed for! How we would have loved you if not for this island!

The winds had ceased completely. But wary, because of a certain splendor that made the air along the shores vibrate, only four disembarked at first. From the Orion we saw them climb a hillock covered with olives, then return. The island was wide and beautiful, they said; from the hillock one could see plateaus, high smoking mountains and, along the shore that curved inward, the last houses of a town. Since nothing that they had seen justified our first fears, all of us, including the sailors, disembarked and made our way toward the town.

The first inhabitants that we encountered were drawing water beside a fountain; they came up to us as soon as they saw us. They were dressed in sumptuous garments which weighed heavily upon them and fell in straight folds; headdresses in the shape of a diadem gave them a priestly air. They offered their lips to be kissed and their eyes glittered with vicious promises. But when we refused them, these women, whom we had not recognized at first, were horrified; on seeing that we were foreigners, ignorant of the customs of the island, they half-opened their purple cloaks and exposed their pink-painted breasts. When we still rejected them, they were astounded; then, taking our hands, they led us toward the town.

Through the streets roved only admirable creatures. Early in their childhood those not perfectly beautiful, feeling the weight of reprobation, went into seclusion. Not all, however, for some of the most horrible and most deformed ones were pampered and used to satisfy abnormal desires. We saw no men—only boys with the faces of women and women with the faces of boys; sensing the approach of new terrors, they fled toward plateaus inhabited only by men. Since the death of Camaralzaman, the men had all left the town. Maddened by the desire for men, these forsaken women, like those whom we had met, would sometimes venture into the countryside; thinking that some men who had come down from the plateaus might come, they disguised themselves in order to seduce them. We learned this, not at the outset, but only after the queen, having led us into the palace, came to tell us that she was holding us prisoner.

Enticing captivity, more perfidious than harsh jails. These women desired our caresses, and they kept us imprisoned in order that they might satisfy their desires.

From the first day the sailors were lost; then one by one the others fell; but there remained twelve of us who would not give in.

The queen became enamored of us; she had us bathe in warm pools and perfumed us with nitrobenzene; she reclothed us in splendid cloaks; but avoiding her caresses, we thought only of our departure. She thought boredom would overcome our resistance, and long days elapsed. We waited; but over the monotonous Ocean moved not a single gust; the air was as blue as the sea; and we did not know what had become of the ship.

From noon until evening we slept in small rooms with glassed doors that opened out on a wide stairway leading down to the sea. When the rays of the evening sun struck the panes, we would go outside. Then the air was calmer; from the sea there arose a scented coolness; we would inhale the cool air and remain enraptured for a short while before descending; at this hour the sun was plunging into the sea; oblique rays struck the marble steps and infused them with scarlet transparencies. Slowly then, all twelve of us, majestic, symmetrical and solemn because of our sumptuous attire, walked down toward the sun, down to the last step where a light breeze sprayed our robes with foam.

At other times or on other days we would sit, all twelve of us, on a raised throne, each like a king, facing the sea and watching the tide rise and fall; we were hoping that perhaps on the waves would appear a sail or in the sky a cloud swollen by a propitious wind. Restrained by our nobility, we made no gestures and remained silent; but when in the evening our fallen hope departed with the light, then, like a wail of despair, a great sob welled up in our chests.