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By Root 631 0

the vastness of night. Oh, glare of distant stars! In that story time can never change anything. The story appears on the starry horizons and will do so forever, always afresh, for once derailed from the tracks of time, it has become unfathomable, never to be exhausted by repetition. There goes that man who hugs the child in his arms—we are repeating on purpose that refrain, that pitiful motto of the night, in order to express the intermittent continuity of walking, sometimes obstructed by the tangle of stars, sometimes completely invisible during long, silent intervals in which one can feel the breeze of eternity. The distant worlds come within reach, glaring frighteningly, they send violent signals through eternity in an unspoken, mute language—while he walks on and on and soothes the little girl endlessly, monotonously, and without hope, helpless against the whispers and sweet persuasions of the night, against the only word formed on the lips of silence, when no one is listening to it. . . .

The story is about a princess kidnapped and changed for another child.

XVIII

When late at night they return to the spacious villa among gardens, to a low white room where a black shining piano stands with all its strings silent, when through the wide glass wall, as if through the panes of a greenhouse, the spring night looks in, pale and blinking with stars, and the scent of cherry blossom floats from bottles and containers over the cool white bedding—the anxious listening fills the sleepless night and the heart speaks in sleep, sobs, races, and stumbles through the long, dewy, moth-swarming night, luminous and scented with bird cherry. . . . Ah, it is the bird cherry that gives depth to the limitless night; hearts aching from flights, tired from happy pursuits, would like to rest awhile on some airy narrow ridge, but from that endless pale night a new night is born, even paler and more disembodied, cut into luminous lines and zigzags, into spirals of stars and pale flights, pierced a thousand times by the suckers of invisible gnats bloated with the blood of maidens; the tireless heart must again stumble through sleep, mad, engaged in starry and complex affairs, in breathless hurry, in moonlit panics, ascending and enlarged, entangled in pale fascinations, in comatose lunar dreams and lethargic shivers.

Ah, all these rapes and pursuits of that night, the treacheries and whispers, Negroes and helmsmen, balcony railings and night-blinds, muslin frocks and veils trailing behind hurried escapes! . . . Until at last, after a sudden blackout, a dull black pause, a moment comes when all the puppets are back in their boxes, all the curtains are drawn, and all the bated breaths are quietly exhaled, while on the vast calm sky drawn is building noiselessly its distant pink and white cities, its delicate, lofty pagodas and minarets.

XIX

Only now will the nature of that spring become clear and legible to an attentive reader of the Book. All these morning preparations, all the day's early ablutions, all its hesitations, doubts, and difficulties of choice will disclose their meaning to one who is familiar with stamps. Stamps introduce one to the complex game of morning diplomacy, to the prolonged negotiations and atmospheric deceits that precede the final version of any day. From the reddish mists of the ninth hour, the motley and spotted Mexico with a serpent wriggling in a condor's beak is trying to emerge, hot and parched by a bright rash, while in a gap of azure amid the greenery oftall trees, a parrot is stubbornly repeating "Guatemala, Guatemala" at even intervals, with the same intonation, and that green word infects things that suddenly become fresh and leafy. Slowly, among difficulties and conflicts, a voting takes place, the order of ceremonies is established, the list of parades, the diplomatic protocol of the day.

In May the days were pink like Egyptian stamps. In the market square brightness shone and undulated. On the sky billows of summery clouds—volcanic, sharply outlined—folded under chinks of light [Barbados, Labrador,