their high summits,
one by one, drop everlasting dews. And at the roots strange poisonous
flowers lie writhing in perturbed slumber. And overhead, with a rustling
and loud noise, the gray clouds rush westwardly forever, until they
roll, a cataract, over the fiery wall of the horizon. But there is no
wind throughout the heaven. And by the shores of the river Zaire there
is neither quiet nor silence.

"It was night, and the rain fell; and falling, it was rain, but, having
fallen, it was blood. And I stood in the morass among the tall and the
rain fell upon my head--and the lilies sighed one unto the other in the
solemnity of their desolation.

"And, all at once, the moon arose through the thin ghastly mist, and was
crimson in color. And mine eyes fell upon a huge gray rock which stood
by the shore of the river, and was lighted by the light of the moon. And
the rock was gray, and ghastly, and tall,--and the rock was gray. Upon
its front were characters engraven in the stone; and I walked through
the morass of water-lilies, until I came close unto the shore, that I
might read the characters upon the stone. But I could not decypher them.
And I was going back into the morass, when the moon shone with a
fuller red, and I turned and looked again upon the rock, and upon the
characters;--and the characters were DESOLATION.

"And I looked upwards, and there stood a man upon the summit of the
rock; and I hid myself among the water-lilies that I might discover the
actions of the man. And the man was tall and stately in form, and was
wrapped up from his shoulders to his feet in the toga of old Rome. And
the outlines of his figure were indistinct--but his features were the
features of a deity; for the mantle of the night, and of the mist, and
of the moon, and of the dew, had left uncovered the features of his
face. And his brow was lofty with thought, and his eye wild with care;
and, in the few furrows upon his cheek I read the fables of sorrow, and
weariness, and disgust with mankind, and a longing after solitude.

"And the man sat upon the rock, and leaned his head upon his hand, and
looked out upon the desolation. He looked down into the low unquiet
shrubbery, and up into the tall primeval trees, and up higher at the
rustling heaven, and into the crimson moon. And I lay close within
shelter of the lilies, and observed the actions of the man. And the
man trembled in the solitude;--but the night waned, and he sat upon the
rock.