Little Poems in Prose

somewhere, since they were driven by an in- vincible need of going on. A curious feature of the affair was that none of these travellers appeared to be irritated at the frightful beast hung at his neck, glued to his back. One would have said that he consid- ered it as an integral portion of himself. All these weary, serious faces witnessed to no de- spair; under the splenetic cupola of heaven, their feet plunged in the dust of a ground as desolate as that heaven itself. They went on their way with the resigned look of those who are damned to hope eternally. And the caravan passed beside me and hid itself in the atmosphere of the horizon, at that point where the rounded surface of the planet withdraws itself from the curiosity of man. For some moments I obstinately strove to understand the mystery; but soon irresistible indifference settled upon me, and I was more heavily weighed down by it than they them- selves were by their own crushing chimeras.