stop, as the day had already ended.
In spite of the beauty of an Oriental sky at night, he felt he had not
strength enough to go on. Fortunately he had been able to find a small
hill, on the summit of which a few palm trees shot up into the air; it
was their verdure seen from afar which had brought hope and consolation
to his heart. His fatigue was so great that he lay down upon a rock
of granite, capriciously cut out like a camp-bed; there he fell asleep
without taking any precaution to defend himself while he slept. He had
made the sacrifice of his life. His last thought was one of regret. He
repented having left the Maugrabins, whose nomadic life seemed to smile
upon him now that he was far from them and without help. He was awakened
by the sun, whose pitiless rays fell with all their force on the granite
and produced an intolerable heat--for he had had the stupidity to place
himself adversely to the shadow thrown by the verdant majestic heads
of the palm trees. He looked at the solitary trees and shuddered--they
reminded him of the graceful shafts crowned with foliage which
characterize the Saracen columns in the cathedral of Arles.

But when, after counting the palm trees, he cast his eyes around
him, the most horrible despair was infused into his soul. Before him
stretched an ocean without limit. The dark sand of the desert spread
further than eye could reach in every direction, and glittered
like steel struck with bright light. It might have been a sea of
looking-glass, or lakes melted together in a mirror. A fiery vapor
carried up in surging waves made a perpetual whirlwind over the
quivering land. The sky was lit with an Oriental splendor of
insupportable purity, leaving naught for the imagination to desire.
Heaven and earth were on fire.

The silence was awful in its wild and terrible majesty. Infinity,
immensity, closed in upon the soul from every side. Not a cloud in the
sky, not a breath in the air, not a flaw on the bosom of the sand, ever
moving in diminutive waves; the horizon ended as at sea on a clear day,
with one line of light, definite as the cut of a sword.

The Provencal threw his arms round the trunk of one of the palm trees,
as though it were the body of a friend, and then, in the shelter of the
thin, straight shadow that the palm cast upon the granite, he wept. Then
sitting down he remained as he was, contemplating with profound sadness
the implacable scene, which was all he had to look upon