I thought that my landing at Alexandretta was alone responsible
for the continuance of my dotage, and hoped that fresh scenes
would banish Carlotta's distracting image. But no, it was one of
the many vain reflections on which I based a false philosophy.
Whether in Beyrout, or the land of the "sweet singer of
Persephone," or Alexandria, or on the Cannebiere of Marseilles,
or in the queer half-Orient of Algiers whither a restless pursuit
of the Identical led me, or in Lisbon, or in the mountainous
republic of Andorre, where I hoped to find primitive wisdom and
to shape a theory from first principles, and whence I was
ironically driven by fleas--whether on land or sea, in cities or
in solitudes, the vanished hand harped on my heartstrings and
the voice that was still (as far as I was concerned) cooed its
dove-notes into my ears.
I remember overhearing myself described on a steamboat by a
pretty American girl of sixteen, as "a quaint gentle old guy who
talks awful rot which no one can understand, and is all the time
thinking about something else.
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