Atlantida

"I do not wish to know. Or, rather, it is because I have too exact a vision of that future, that I pretend to destroy myself in the only destiny that is worth while: a nature unfathomed and virgin, a mysterious love.

"A nature unfathomed and virgin. I must explain myself. One winter day, in a large city all streaked with the soot that falls from the black chimneys of factories and of those horrible houses in the suburbs, I attended a funeral.

"We followed the hearse in the mud. The church was new, damp and poor. Aside from two or three people, relatives struck down by a dull sorrow, everyone had just one idea: to find some pretext to get away. Those who went as far as the cemetery were those who did not find an excuse. I see the gray walls and the cypresses, those trees of sun and shade, so beautiful in the country of southern France against the low, purple hills. I see the horrible undertaker's men in greasy jackets and shiny top hats. I see . . . No, I'll stop; it's too horrible.

"Near the wall, in a remote plot, a grave had been dug in frightful yellow pebbly clay. It was there that they left the dead man whose name I no longer remember.

"While they were lowering the casket, I looked at my hands, those hands which in that strangely lighted country had pressed the hands of Antinea. A great pity for my body seized me, a great fear of

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