usic I made up the fire and parched an ear of maize for my
dinner, and while laboriously crunching the dry hard grain I thanked
Heaven for having bestowed on me such good molars. Finally I slung my
hammock in its old corner, and placing myself in it in my favourite
oblique position, my hands clasped behind my head, one knee cocked up,
the other leg dangling down, I resigned myself to idle thought. I felt
very happy. How strange, thought I, with a little self-flattery, that
I, accustomed to the agreeable society of intelligent men and charming
women, and of books, should find such perfect contentment here! But I
congratulated myself too soon. The profound silence began at length to
oppress me. It was not like the forest, where one has wild birds for
company, where their cries, albeit inarticulate, have a meaning and give
a charm to solitude. Even the sight and whispered sounds of green leaves
and rushes trembling in the wind have for us something of intelligence
and sympathy; but I could not commune with mud walls and an earthen pot.
Feeling my loneliness too acutely, I began to regret that I had left
Rima, then to feel remorse at the secrecy I had practiced. Even now
while I inclined idly in my hammock, she would be roaming the forest in
search of me, listening for my footsteps, fearing perhaps that I had
met with some accident where there was no person to succour me. It was
painful to think of her in this way, of the pain I had doubtless given
her by stealing off without a word of warning. Springing to the floor, I
flung out of the house and went down to the stream. It was better there,
for now the greatest heat of the day was over, and the weltering sun
began to look large and red and rayless through the afternoon haze.

I seated myself on a stone within a yard or two of the limpid water; and
now the sight of nature and the warm, vital air and sunshine infected
my spirit and made it possible for me to face the position calmly,
even hopefully. The position was this: for some days the idea had been
present in my mind, and was now fixed there, that this desert was to
be my permanent home. The thought of going back to Caracas, that little
Paris in America, with its Old World vices, its idle political passions,
its empty round of gaieties, was unendurable. I was changed, and this
change--so great, so complete--was proof that the old artificial life
had not been and could not be the real one, in harmony with my deeper
and tr