... There's rain in the air; the sky is grey; the crests of Mount Zaccar are enveloped in fog; it's a miserable Sunday.... I'm in my small hotel room, lighting one cigarette after another, just trying to take my mind off things.... The hotel library has been put at my disposal. I find an odd volume of Montaigne between a detailed history of hotel registrations and a few Paul de Kock novels. Opening it at random, I re-read the admirable essay on the death of La Boétie.... So, now I'm more dreamy and gloomy than ever.... A few drops of rain are starting to fall, each one leaving a large star in the dust accumulated on the windowsill since last year's rain.... The book slips out of my hands, as I stare hypnotically at the melancholy star for some time.... The town clock strikes two on an old _marabout_ whose slender, high, white walls I can see from here.... Poor old marabout. Thirty years ago, who would have thought that one day it would have a big municipal dial stuck in its solar plexus, and on Sundays, on the stroke of two, it would give a lead to the churches of Milianah, to sound their bells for Vespers?... There they go now, ringing away.... And not for a brief spell, either... Without doubt this room is a miserable place. The huge, dawn spinners, known as philosopher's thought spiders, have spun their webs everywhere.... I'm going out. * * * * * I'm on the main square, now. Just the place for the military band of the Third Division, not put off by a bit of rain, which has just arranged itself around the conductor. The Brigade General appears at one of the Division windows, surrounded by his fancy women. The sub-prefect is on the square and walks to and fro on the arm of the Justice of the Peace. Half a dozen young Arabs, stripped to the waist, are playing marbles in a corner to the sound of their own ferocious shouting. Elsewhere, an old Jew in rags comes to look for a ray of sunshine he left here yesterday and looks astonished not to find it.... "One, two, three...!" the band launched into an old Talexian mazurka, which Barbary organs used to play, irritatingly, under my window last year. But it moved me to tears today. Oh, how happy are these musicians of the third! Their eyes fixed on the dotted crochets, drunk on rhythm and noise, only conscious of counting beats. Their whole being was in that hand-sized bit of paper vibrating in brass prongs at the end of their instruments. "One, two, three...!" They have everything they need these fine men, except they never play the national anthem; it makes them home sick.... Alas, I haven't much of a musical ear and this piece irritates me, so I'm off.... * * * * * Now, where on earth would I be able to have a nice time, on a grey Sunday like this? I know! Sid'Omar's shop is open. I'm going there.