With its clustered buildings and the warm tones of its marble walls, the locality resembles a city in Africa or in Italy. The system of drainage is perfect, and on the terrace where we are seated one enjoys pure air and a most extended view. Unfinished buildings, ruined wharves, the foundations of crumbling bridges, surround this cyclad on all sides. Since the jetty of yellow mud where we live has been embraced by this pearly expanse,--from an inundation whose progress I survey each evening from the ramparts,--all illusion and enchantment mount up to me. It is in vain that the barges come unceasingly from the other side of the lagoon, carrying us earth to strengthen our crumbling embankments. What faith I had in these green fields, road-divided, to which the farmer would not hesitate to confide his seeds and his labor! And then one day, on ascending the wall, I saw them replaced by these waters the color of the dawn. Only a village emerges here and there, a tree drowned to the branches; and, at this place where a yellow gang was digging, I see boats as close together as eyelashes. But also I read menaces in this too-beautiful evening! No stronger than an ancient precept against voluptuousness is this ruined wall, where the miserable soldiers who guard the gates announce the night by blasts from trumpets four feet long. It cannot defend our black factories and warehouses, filled with hides and tallow, against the night and against the irresistible spread of these rose-colored and azure waters; for an oncoming wave will sweep me from my feet and carry me away, lifting me up beneath the arms. And again I see myself at the highest fork of an old tree in the wind, a child balanced among the apples. From there, like a god on his pinnacle, spectator of the theater of the world, I study with deep consideration the relief and conformation of the earth, its disposition of slopes and planes. With the piercing eye of a crow I peer up and down the country spread out under my perch. I follow this road which, appearing twice on the brow of little hills, finally loses itself in the forest. I miss nothing: the direction of smoke, the qualities of shadow and of light, the progress of the farmwork, a wagon which lurches along the road, the shots of the hunters. No need of a paper wherein I could only read the past! I have only to climb to this branch, and, across the wall, all the present is before me. The moon rises. I turn my face toward her, bathed with light in this house of fruits. I remain motionless, and from time to time an apple from the tree falls like a ripe and heavy thought. HEAT