been born to fill an entire
existence! And the earth did not tremble, and nobody was moved, and the
world ignored this great sorrow, even as it would ignore the misfortunes
of a pair of ants. Ah! Misery!...

He would roam about the world carrying his recollections with him, and
perhaps some day he would come to forget them, for one can live only by
forgetting; but when his grief should dissolve with the years he would
be left an empty man, like a smiling automaton, incapable of any
affections other than material ones. And thus he would go on living
until he should grow old and die. And she, the beautiful creature, who
seemed to scatter music and incense at every step,--the incomparable
one, the only one,--would likewise grow old, far from his side. She
would be one more Jewish wife, an excellent mother of a family, grown
stout from domestic life, flabby and shapeless from the productivity of
her race, with a brood of children about her, preoccupied at all hours
with the earnings of the family, a full moon, cumbrous, yellow, without
the slightest resemblance to the springtime star that had illuminated
the fleeting and best moments of his life. What a jest of fate!...
Farewell forever, Luna!... No, not Luna. Farewell, Horabuena!

On the next day he took passage on the ship that was leaving for Port
Said. What was there for him to do in Gibraltar?... It had been for
three months a paradise, at the side of the woman who beautified his
existence; now it was an intolerable city, cramped and monotonous; a
deserted castle; a damp, dark prison. He telegraphed to his uncle,
informing him of his departure. The vessel would weigh anchor at night,
after the sunset gun, when it had taken on its supply of coal.

The hotel people brought him news. Khiamull had died at the hospital, in
the full possession of his mental faculties as is characteristic of
consumptives, and had spoken of the distant land of the sun, of its
virgins, dark and slender as bronze statues, crowned with the lotus
flower. A hemorrhage had put an end to his hopes. All the town was
talking about his burial. His compatriots, the Hindu shopkeepers, had
sent a delegation to the governor and made arrangements for the funeral
rites. They were going to cremate the body on the outskirts of the town,
on the beach that faced the East. His remains must not rot in impure
soil. The English governor, deferent toward the creeds of his various
subjects, presented them with the n