Spring: -I- -II- -III-
The Stamp Album: -IV- -V- -VI- -VII- -VIII- -IX- -X- (XI) -XII-
In the Municipal Park: -XIII- -XIV- -XV- -XVI-
Springtime Twilight: -XVII-
The Villa: -XVIII- -XIX- -XX- -XXI- -XXII- -XXIII- -XXIV- -XXV- -XXVI- -XXVII-
Bianka’s Lineage: -XXVIII- -XXIX- -XXX- -XXXI- -XXXII- -XXXIII-
Hiatus: -XXXIV- -XXXV- -XXXVI- -XXXVII-
Finale: -XXXVIII- -XXXIX- -XL-
XI
THIS IS the place to elaborate a trifling parallel between Alexander the Great and myself. Alexander was susceptible to the aromas of countries. His nostrils held a prescience of stupendous possibilities. He was one of those over whose faces God places his hand in their sleep, so that they might come to know what they had not known, and be filled with guesses and suspicions, as reflections of faraway worlds pass under their closed eyelids. But Alexander took divine allusions too literally. Being a man of action, that is to say of shallow spirit, he justified his calling as the mission of the conqueror of the world. His breast filled with the same insatiability as my own; those same sighs swelled it, laying claim to his soul, horizon after horizon, landscape after landscape. There was no one to correct his mistake. Not even Aristotle understood him. And so, despite having conquered the whole world, he died disappointed, despairing of God — retreating before him — and His miracles. His portrait adorned the coins and stamps of all countries. As his punishment, he became the Franz Joseph I of his times.
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