The way, if such it might be called, threading the mazes through a chain
of low hills, and consisting only of a loose and ever-shifting bed of
dry sand, grew every moment more and more perplexed. Had it been
daylight, there appeared no object by which to direct my course,--no
mark that might distinguish whether or not my path was in a right line
or a circle: I seemed to be rambling through a succession of
amphitheatres formed by the sand-hills, every one so closely resembling
its neighbour that I could not recognise any decided features on which
to found that distinction of ideas which philosophers term
individuality. In almost any other mood of the mind this would have been
a puzzling and disagreeable dilemma; but at that moment it appeared of
the least possible consequence to me where the dark labyrinth might
terminate.
Striving to escape from thought, from recollection, the wild and
cheerless monotony of my path seemed to convey a desperate stillness to
the mind, to quench in some measure the fiery outburst of my spirit. It
was but a deceitful, calm--the deadening lull of spent anguish: I awoke
to a keener sense of misery, from which there was no escape.
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