Beneath a broad grey sky, upon a vast and dusty plain devoid of grass,
and where not even a nettle or a thistle was to be seen, I met several
men who walked bowed down to the ground.
Each one carried upon his back an enormous Chimæra as heavy as a sack
of flour or coal, or as the equipment of a Roman foot-soldier.
But the monstrous beast was not a dead weight, rather she enveloped and
oppressed the men with her powerful and elastic muscles, and clawed
with her two vast talons at the breast of her mount. Her fabulous head
reposed upon the brow of the man like one of those horrible casques by
which ancient warriors hoped to add to the terrors of the enemy.
I questioned one of the men, asking him why they went so. He replied
that he knew nothing, neither he nor the others, but that evidently
they went somewhere, since they were urged on by an unconquerable
desire to walk.
Very curiously, none of the wayfarers seemed to be irritated by the
ferocious beast hanging at his neck and cleaving to his back: one had
said that he considered it as a part of himself. These grave and weary
faces bore witness to no despair. Beneath the splenetic cupola of the
heavens, their feet trudging through the dust of an earth as desolate
as the sky, they journeyed onwards with the resigned faces of men
condemned to hope for ever. So the train passed me and faded into the
atmosphere of the horizon at the place where the planet unveils herself
to the curiosity of the human eye.
During several moments I obstinately endeavoured to comprehend this
mystery; but irresistible Indifference soon threw herself upon me,
nor was I more heavily dejected thereby than they by their crushing
Chimæras.