Читать книгу Paris Spleen - Charles Baudelaire - Страница 13

Under a wide gray sky, in a great dusty plain, pathless, grassless, without so much as a thistle or a nettle, I came across some men walking, their shoulders bent.

Each carried on his back an enormous Chimæra, heavy as a sack of flour or charcoal, or a Roman foot-soldier’s pack.

But the monstrous beast was no dead weight; on the contrary, it enveloped and mauled its man with supple and powerful muscles; scratching with two enormous claws the chest of its mount. And its fabulous head surmounted the man’s, like one of those horrible helmets ancient warriors wore, hoping to increase the terror of their foes.

I questioned one of these men and asked him where they were going. He told me he didn’t know, nor did the others; but obviously they were going somewhere, since they were driven by an invincible need to go.

Curious to note: none of these travelers seemed annoyed by the fierce beast hanging at his neck and attached to his back; one must suppose he considered it a part of himself. All these faces, tired and serious, betrayed no despair; under the splenetic cupola of sky, feet sunk in the dust of a soil every bit as desolate as the sky, they trudged on, with the resigned faces of those condemned forever to hope.

And the cortege passed by me and sank into the atmosphere at the horizon, where the planet’s rounded surface renders it unavailable to human curiosity.

And for a few moments I persisted in trying to solve the mystery; but soon irresistible Indifference came over me, and I was more heavily burdened with it than they by their crushing Chimæras.