"
"The desert is, at all events, warm," Beclere interjected.
Hot, trackless spaces, burning solitudes through which nobody ever
went or came. It was the silence that frightened Owen; not even in
the forest, in the dark solitudes avoided by the birds, is there
silence. There is a wind among the tree-tops, and when the wind is
still the branches sway a little; there is nearly always a swaying
among the branches, and even when there is none, the falling of some
giant too old to subsist longer breaks the silence, frightens the
wild beast, who retires growling. The sea conveys the same sense of
primal solitude as the forest, but it is less silent; the sea tears
among the rocks as if it would destroy the land, but when its rage
is over the sea laughs, and leaps, and caresses, and the day after
fawns upon the land, drawing itself up like a woman to her lover, as
voluptuously. Nowhere on earth only in the desert, is there silence;
even in the tomb there are worms, but in some parts of the desert
there are not even worms, the body dries into dust without decaying.
Owen imagined the resignation of the wanderer who finds no water at
the spring, and lies down to die amid the mighty indifference of
sterile Nature; and breaking the silence, somewhat against his will,
he communicated his thoughts to Beclere, that an unhappy man who
dare not take his life could not do better than to lose himself in
the desert.
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