Why, look, here are ferns growing—edible roots
[Eats a little.
'Twould be fitter food for an animal;— But the text says: Bridle the natural man! Furthermore it is written: The proud shall be humbled, And whoso abaseth himself, exalted. [Uneasily. Exalted? Yes, that's what will happen with me;— No other result can so much as be thought of. Fate will assist me away from this place, And arrange matters so that I get a fresh start. This is only a trial; deliverance will follow,— If only the Lord let's me keep my health.
[Dismisses his misgivings, lights a cigar, stretches himself, and gazes out over the desert.
What an enormous, limitless waste!—
Far in the distance an ostrich is striding.—
What can one fancy was really God's
Meaning in all of this voidness and deadness?
This desert, bereft of all sources of life;
This burnt-up cinder, that profits no one;
This patch of the world, that for ever lies fallow;
This corpse, that never, since earth's creation,
Has brought its Maker so much as thanks,—
Why was it created?—How spendthrift is Nature!—
Is that sea in the east there, that dazzling expanse
All gleaming? It can't be; 'tis but a mirage.
The sea's to the west; it lies piled up behind me,
Dammed out from the desert by a sloping ridge.
[A thought flashes through his mind.
Dammed out? Then I could? The ridge is narrow.
