In the freshness of the early dawn the breath of the breeze calms all this fever. My mind pauses on the last rung of the ladder of memory. There it rests, and at the end of my watch I find myself back again in a garden of Malta. According to the calendar this episode dates only eight days back, but it seems to me that our life has thrown it into the remote past. In the midst of the arid rocks of Malta there is a garden, enclosed with high walls. The parterres of black soil, imported from Sicily, are cut by alleys of gravel. On the terrace bloom the rarest flowers under the sun. They are not European, they are choice specimens from America and Asia. The corollas which grow in this garden come only from certain Southern archipelagoes, but human skill has made them live in Malta. Arbors shelter benches of ancient stone. Here and there arches of perfume brush the dreamer’s head. Since it is a place of quiet and sovereign beauty, human beings do not frequent it. Every evening, before returning to the noisy streets of Malta, I spend a few solitary hours in the company of the flowers. Only the gardeners disturb my revery, but they early become acquainted with me. The third evening one offered me the bouquet that still perfumes my cabin, and refused my grateful reward. That evening I was walking at the end of the garden, by a fountain with a brim of stone and two basins of green water. In it the twilight reflections dissolve. The fragrance that lingers there is enchanting. On this little lake float two white swans. They know that their prison will never be larger; the paddles of their feet are still; their dazzling wings, rose-tinted in the setting sun, open like a sail to the breaths of the breeze, and they glide very gently, bending their necks as if to breathe in the exquisite sweetness of the evening. A little dog, tawny and silken, ran around the fountain, barking at the swans when they skirted the rim, at their disdain when they moved towards the center of the pool. On a bench a woman dressed in mauve was reading a book, turning the page slowly. The air held only the last vestiges of light. When this woman raised her attentive eyes towards the dog, she revealed a sorrowful face and eyes heavy with passion. I am slightly disturbed by these neighbors, but I sit down and abandon myself to the witchery of the colors and odors of the dying day. Sorrow is solaced by an excess of sorrow, and the exile finds joy only in an excess of exile. Solitary, between the past and the future, I am at peace.