We stand in the midst of space, with all about us the blackness, The melancholy of Earth. We pass along the road. And we alone exhale the warm breath of living beings. Haha! My nerves are unstrung. You there ... Cébès... Do you hear me? CÉBÈS: Yes. SIMON: Speak to me. Had you not something to tell me? CÉBÈS: I want... SIMON: What do you want? CÉBÈS: Nothing! Only a room when it snows and that no one should know where I am! SIMON: What did you say? CÉBÈS: I am only a boy. There has been no one to help me! I have had to endure much suffering. I am plagued with bitter fancies. I shrink from the light of the sun. Why should you force me to speak only to mock at me? SIMON: I will take you by the hair of your head and shake you. Come, in whom will you confide if not In the man who at this very moment Walks at your side through the blackness of night. I tell you that you are a man and not a child, like some pale seedling pushing its way through the mould. I am only a little older than you, Yet I have sworn To hold myself erect! To never yield, to have no fear, and to accomplish what I undertake! Speak! Take my arm For the night is so dark one can scarcely see. CÉBÈS: Ah, well! I am very wretched! O that I might set forth clearly things that are obscure! Where shall I begin? To express the weariness that has no beginning, but has become a part of one's consciousness like the familiar things of every day? Thus might the young man speak Who like an emperor dethroned, his head thrust through a sack, sits motionless with haggard eyes, While the wind makes free with his hair like a wanton trull, Vacantly contemplating the dawn of another day Full of little whisperings like a dead tree; The multitude of foolish men who interrogate each other, fight, talk, and cast their eyes this way and that, And then, turning towards us the hairy side of the head, disappear like the Manes; The catastrophes and the sombre passions; The clouds that cover the hills with shadows; the cries of beasts, the hum of the villages, the clatter of the highways; The wood, and the chant of the coursing wind; the carts that are charged with sheaves and flowers; And the Victories that pass their appointed way like harvesters, with swarthy cheeks, Veiled and bearing a drum on a golden thigh. SIMON: Finish. What would he say? CÉBÈS: Nothing. Are there not men whose eyes Melt like the broken medlar that scatters abroad its pips, And women with cancer at work in their bodies, like the amadou in the beech? And monstrous births, men having the muzzles of oxen? And children violated and murdered by their fathers, And old men whose children grudgingly count the days that still are left them? All the diseases spy upon us, ulcer and abscess, epilepsy and shaking palsy and at the last, comes gout and the gravel that clogs urination. Phthisis lights its fire; the pudenda grow mouldy like grapes; and the bag of the belly