Useless toil!

Fruitless attempts! Vain efforts! He experienced nothing. Not one menacing phantom did he behold. He no longer slept so heavily did despair and shame weigh him down.—So much so that one night he was stricken in his light-giving solitude by a cerebral congestion, and fell into a fit, wherein he cried aloud, to the sound of the sea, and with the great ocean winds smiting his tower lost there in the infinite:

‘Ghosts—for the love of God, ghosts! Let me see just one ghost! I’ve well deserved it!’

The God whom he invoked did not vouchsafe him this grace. And the old actor expired, still proclaiming with all its futile emphasis his great desire to set eyes on the ghosts, and never once seeing that what he was seeking was simply—himself.

Translated by Hamish Miles.