It is
not here. You all know how, coming eagerly to a house to see someone
dearly loved, you find in their place on entering a sister or a
friend who makes excuses for them; you all know how the mind grows
blank at the news and all nature around one shrivels. It is a worse
emptiness than to be alone. So it is with me when I consider this as
I write it, and then think of That Other which should have taken its
place; for what I am writing now is like a little wizened figure
dressed in mourning and weeping before a deserted shrine, but That
Other which I have lost would have been like an Emperor returned
from a triumph and seated upon a throne.
Indeed, indeed it was admirable! If you ask me where I wrote it, it
was in Constantine, upon the Rock of Cirta, where the storms come
bowling at you from Mount Atlas and where you feel yourself part of
the sky. At least it was there in Cirta that I blocked out the
thing, for efforts of that magnitude are not completed in one place
or day. It was in Cirta that I carved it into form and gave it a
general life, upon the 17th of January, 1905, sitting where long ago
Massinissa had come riding in through the only gate of the city,
sitting his horse without stirrups or bridle.
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