Vagabonds

 

 

Pitiful brother! What frightful nights I owed him! "I have not put enough

ardor into this enterprise. I have trifled with his infirmity. My fault

should we go back to exile, and to slavery." He implied I was unlucky and

of a very strange innocence, and would add disquieting reasons.

 

For reply, I would jeer at this Satanic doctor and, in the end, going

over to the window, I would create, beyond the countryside crossed by

bands of rare music, phantoms of nocternal extravegence to come.

 

After this vaguely hygenic diversion, I would lie down on my pallet and

no sooner asleep than, almost every night, the poor brother would rise,

his mouth foul, eyes starting from his head,-- just as he had dreamed he

looked! and would drag me into the room, howling his dream of imbecilic

sorrow.

 

I had, in truth, pledged myself to restore him to his primitive state of

child of the Sun,-- and, nourished by the wine of caverns and the biscuit

of the road, we wandered, I impatient to find the place and the formula.