its fatal length. And they knew now that their road would end only with the surprising splendour of the morning. And this couple, arms linked over shoulders, endlessly prolonged their enchanted walk with eyes closed, hair flying, bare feet on moss out of the strange tales of chivalry, and with their slightest gestures visibly surrounded by all the signs of a false elegance a thousand times more disturbing than the real.
Long lingered the hours of the profound night. And now a vague feeling they were powerless to resist invaded the souls of Heide and of Albert. It seemed to them that the planet, swept along by the heart of the night which it belaboured with the crests of all its trees, overturned and spun backward following the obstinate direction of the avenue, more unreal than the axis of the poles, more abundant than the sun's rays drawn in chalk on a blackboard. And as though lifted by a prodigious effort onto the roof of the smooth planet, onto the nocturnal ridge of the world, they felt, with a divine shudder of cold, the sun sinking under them to an immense depth, and the unballasted avenue as it climbed right through the thickness of the true night revealing to them, minute by minute, all its secret and untrodden paths. In the silence of the woods, hardly distinguishable from that of the stars, they lived through a night of the world in all its sidereal intimacy, and the revolution of the planet, its thrilling orb, seemed to govern the harmony of their most ordinary gestures.
Now, however, it appeared to them that they were crossing low and watchful plains, interspersed with stagnant waters, where reeds like spears rose in supernatural immobility, then the road slowly climbed an imposing hill where a lighter air presaged still incommensurable altitudes—and often they would look back avidly, trying to make out the levelled landscape still completely covered by the dense veils of night. But their mad anguish was drawing to an end. A gentle breeze out of the black sky swayed the funereal folds of what seemed at first the unknown and unnameable substance of primeval chaos itself, but that finally proved to be only a heavy covering of grey clouds hovering over this nightmare landscape. And morning with its wings swept the shivering stretches of pure solitude. And, as though at the brusque signal of a warning gun, Heide and Albert stood still.
The gigantic avenue ended at the very summit of the plateau. In the middle of a level heath swept at this moment by the morning breeze, stretched a vast circular arena, appearing and disappearing in the capricious vagaries of the trailing mist, and very exactly delimited by a tender and luminous grassy turf which rendered its circumference clearly discernible, and contrasted strangely with the dishevelled, brambly and in every way utterly lugubrious character of the bushes carpeting the hillside. Cordons of stones scattered negligently here and there, which owed to the growth of the lichen now cloaking them their eerie hue of long bleached bones, accentuated for the eye the exorbitant circumference, and redoubled an almost intolerable perplexity. For, avenues in every respect exactly similar to the one Heide and Albert had been following here converged from all parts of the horizon, and from this vantage point the eye could encompass the entire vast perspective. It would be difficult for me to make the reader fully understand the impression produced upon Heide and Albert by this very strictly incongruous manifestation of the combined efforts of nature and art, unless it is realized that the most conclusive motive for the oppression transmitted to their minds from all sides, was that of an irrevocable and yet incomprehensible necessity. And perhaps the word rendezvous with the double meaning it implies—by a twist, whose profound cruelty is here apparent—of carefully concerted machinations and, at the same time, of the entire abdication of all the purely defensive reflexes, would
Long lingered the hours of the profound night. And now a vague feeling they were powerless to resist invaded the souls of Heide and of Albert. It seemed to them that the planet, swept along by the heart of the night which it belaboured with the crests of all its trees, overturned and spun backward following the obstinate direction of the avenue, more unreal than the axis of the poles, more abundant than the sun's rays drawn in chalk on a blackboard. And as though lifted by a prodigious effort onto the roof of the smooth planet, onto the nocturnal ridge of the world, they felt, with a divine shudder of cold, the sun sinking under them to an immense depth, and the unballasted avenue as it climbed right through the thickness of the true night revealing to them, minute by minute, all its secret and untrodden paths. In the silence of the woods, hardly distinguishable from that of the stars, they lived through a night of the world in all its sidereal intimacy, and the revolution of the planet, its thrilling orb, seemed to govern the harmony of their most ordinary gestures.
Now, however, it appeared to them that they were crossing low and watchful plains, interspersed with stagnant waters, where reeds like spears rose in supernatural immobility, then the road slowly climbed an imposing hill where a lighter air presaged still incommensurable altitudes—and often they would look back avidly, trying to make out the levelled landscape still completely covered by the dense veils of night. But their mad anguish was drawing to an end. A gentle breeze out of the black sky swayed the funereal folds of what seemed at first the unknown and unnameable substance of primeval chaos itself, but that finally proved to be only a heavy covering of grey clouds hovering over this nightmare landscape. And morning with its wings swept the shivering stretches of pure solitude. And, as though at the brusque signal of a warning gun, Heide and Albert stood still.
The gigantic avenue ended at the very summit of the plateau. In the middle of a level heath swept at this moment by the morning breeze, stretched a vast circular arena, appearing and disappearing in the capricious vagaries of the trailing mist, and very exactly delimited by a tender and luminous grassy turf which rendered its circumference clearly discernible, and contrasted strangely with the dishevelled, brambly and in every way utterly lugubrious character of the bushes carpeting the hillside. Cordons of stones scattered negligently here and there, which owed to the growth of the lichen now cloaking them their eerie hue of long bleached bones, accentuated for the eye the exorbitant circumference, and redoubled an almost intolerable perplexity. For, avenues in every respect exactly similar to the one Heide and Albert had been following here converged from all parts of the horizon, and from this vantage point the eye could encompass the entire vast perspective. It would be difficult for me to make the reader fully understand the impression produced upon Heide and Albert by this very strictly incongruous manifestation of the combined efforts of nature and art, unless it is realized that the most conclusive motive for the oppression transmitted to their minds from all sides, was that of an irrevocable and yet incomprehensible necessity. And perhaps the word rendezvous with the double meaning it implies—by a twist, whose profound cruelty is here apparent—of carefully concerted machinations and, at the same time, of the entire abdication of all the purely defensive reflexes, would
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