wns, possesses, all he sees,--who does not dwell,
but who goes wherever he pleases; when my far-hovering eye caught a
glimpse of a house in the horizon, and was thus disagreeably arrested in
its airy flight, sometimes there came (God forgive me this passing
thought, it was no more than that) the wish--would that this dwelling of
man were not! there too is trouble and sorrow; there too they quarrel
and fight about mine and thine!--Oh! the happy desert is mine, is thine,
is everybody's, is nobody's.--It is said that a forester has proposed to
disturb the settlements, to plant forests on the fields of the peasants
and in place of their torn-down villages; the far more inhuman thought
has taken possession of me at times--what if the heather-grown heath
were still here the same as it was centuries ago, undisturbed, untouched
by the hand of man! But as I have said, I did not mean it seriously. For
when tired and weary, suffering from hunger and thirst, I thought
longingly of the Arab's tent and coffee-pot, I thanked God that a
heather-thatched roof--be it even miles away--promised me shelter and
refreshment.

On a still, warm September day, several years ago, I found myself
walking on this same heath, which, Arabically speaking, I call mine. No
wind stirred the blushing heather; the air was heavy and misty with
heat. The far-off hills that limited the horizon seemed to hover like
clouds around the immense plain, and took many wonderful shapes: houses,
towers, castles, men and animals; but all of dark uncertain outline,
changing like dream pictures; now a cottage grew into a church, and that
in turn into a pyramid; here a spire arose, there another sank; a man
became a horse, and this in turn an elephant; here floated a boat, there
a ship with all sails set.

My eye found its pleasure for quite a while in watching these fantastic
figures--a panorama which only the sailor and the desert-dweller have
occasion to enjoy--when finally I began to look for a real house among
the many false ones; I wanted right ardently to exchange all my
beautiful fairy palaces for a single human cottage.

Success was mine; I soon discovered a real farm without spires and
towers, whose outlines became distincter and sharper the nearer I came
to it, and which, flanked by peat-stacks, looked much larger than it
really was. Its inmates were unknown to me. Their clothes were poor,
their furniture simple, but I knew that the heath-dweller often hides
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