That is, in brief, what I knew of Marta’s life on that lovely farm. I heard it from an elderly villager, who knew her from the time she was a little girl until her adolescence, when she vanished from that place. She left behind her only a few tears in the eyes of her guardian’s wife and a fragile, affecting memory that wafts with the breezes of morning in that gorge, then fades like the breath of a child on a window pane.

II

The autumn of 1900 arrived and I returned to Beirut, having spent the summer recess in the north of Lebanon. Before starting classes, I passed an entire week wandering about with my comrades in the city, enjoying the bliss of freedom that youth so loves and which it is denied at home and in the classroom. We resembled so many sparrows who spied the door of their cage open before them, so they proceed to sate their hearts with the delight of roaming wild and the rapture of warbling their songs. Youth is a delicious dream, the savor of which is stolen by the riddles of textbooks that render it a harsh vigil. Will ever a day come when sages can combine the reveries of youth with the joys of learning, the way a common enemy unites the hearts of those who hate one other? Will a time arrive when nature becomes the teacher of the son of Adam, and humanity his book, and life his school? We do not know. But we sense our rapid progress toward spiritual advancement, and that advancement is the perception of the beauty of natural things by means of our inmost feelings, and seeking happiness through our love for that beauty.

One evening, I was sitting on the balcony of the house, contemplating the constant struggle in the city square and listening to the hawking of the street vendors, each calling out the virtues of his wares or produce. A five-year-old boy approached, wearing tattered rags and hauling on his shoulders a tray of layered flowers. In a thin voice quelled by ingrained abasement and a pained, broken spirit, he said, “Want to buy a flower, mister?”

I looked into his small, sallow face, and pondered his eyes, with their dark circles, the mascara of poverty and wretchedness, his slightly open mouth like a deep wound in a pained countenance, his bare, skinny wrists, his slight, haggard frame, stooped beneath the tray of flowers, like the wilted stalk of a yellow rose amidst high grass. I mulled over all these sights in an instant, demonstrating my sympathy with smiles more bitter than tears, the sort of smiles that are torn from our inmost hearts and appear upon our lips and that, were we to leave them alone, would rise and spill forth from the corners of our eyes. So I bought some of his flowers, with the desire of purchasing his conversation. I sensed that behind his doleful glances lay a small heart, which enfolded within itself one act in the tragedy of the poor that is forever played out on the stage of days, but in which few take an interest because it is painful. When I addressed a few kind comments to him, he felt secure and friendly and looked at me with amazement because, like his companions among the poor, he was unused to anything but coarse words from those who, for the most part, view street boys as dirty things of no moment rather than as small, injured souls wronged by fate.