, they gabble a phrase
without understanding its meaning, and as they speak, gaze vacantly
into the auditorium.

* * * * *

I leave the theatre.... I hear shouting in the surrounding blackness
from somewhere in the square.... Some Maltese settling a point, no
doubt, at the point of a knife....I return slowly along the ramparts to
the hotel. A gorgeous scent of oranges and thujas wafts up from the
plain. The air is mild and the sky almost clear.... At the end of the
road, yonder, an old, walled phantom reaches upwards--the debris of
some old temple. This wall is sacred. Every day, Arab women come to
hang ex-voto gifts, bits of haiks and foutas, long tresses of red hair
tied with silver wire, and bits of burnous.... All this dances about in
the warm breeze, lit by a narrow ray of moonlight....

THE LOCUSTS

Just one more souvenir of Algeria and then--back to the windmill!...

I couldn't sleep the night I arrived at the farm of the Sahel. Maybe it
was the new country, the stress of the voyage, the barking jackals, on
top of the irritating, oppressive, and completely asphyxiating heat. It
felt as though the mosquito nets were keeping the air out with the
insects.... As I opened my window at first light, I saw a heavy summer
mist, slow-moving, fringed with black and pink, and floating in the air
like smoke over a battle field. Not a leaf moved in the lovely gardens
stretched out before me, where, the well-spaced vines, that gave such
sweet wine, were enjoying full sunshine on the slopes. There were also
European fruit trees sheltered in a shady spot, and small orange and
mandarin trees in long, closely packed lines. Everything had the same
gloomy look about it, with that certain limpness of leaf waiting for
the storm. Even the banana trees, those great, pale-green reeds,
usually on the move as some light breeze tangles their fine, light
foliage, stood straight and silent in their symmetrical plumage.

I stayed there for a while looking at this fabulous plantation, where
seemingly all types of the world's trees could be found, each one
giving exotic flowers and fruit, in its proper season. Between the
wheat fields and the massive cork-oaks, a stream shone, and
refreshed--the eye at least--on an airless morning. As I approved the
fineness and order of it all: the beautiful farm with its Moorish
arcades and terraces, brilliantly white in the dawn, and its
surrounding stables and barns, I reca