On An Exhausted Field, Only Weeds Grow.

Amid The Stillness Of The Night, In The Depths Of The Ravine, From The Direction In Which The Corpses Lay Suddenly Resounded A Kind Of Inhuman, Frightful Laughter In Which Quivered Despair, And Joy, And Cruelty, And Suffering, And Pain, And Sobbing, And Derision; The Heart-rending And Spasmodic Laughter Of The Insane Or Condemned.

Nevertheless, In This Sea Of Human Wretchedness And Malice There Bloomed At Times Compassion, As A Pale Flower Blooms In A Putrid Marsh.

The Shots Had Dispersed The Birds; There Remained Only Two Marabous, Standing Between Ten And Twenty Paces Away And Plunged In Reverie. They Were Like Two Old Men With Bald Heads Pressed Between The Shoulders.

If The Infinity Of The Sea May Call Out Thus, Perhaps When A Man Is Growing Old, Calls Come To Him, Too, From Another Infinity Still Darker And More Deeply Mysterious; And The More He Is Wearied By Life The Dearer Are Those Calls To Him.

But I Think Happiness Springs From Another Source, A Far Deeper One That Doesn't Depend On Will Because It Comes From Love.