ABSTRACT
At night the whole town grows mysterious and wonderful. It is very dark under the trees. No carriages or carts are running; men and women walk silently with bare feet. The air is heavy with the smell of unknown spicy things, and trembles to the “lily-slender” voice of innumerable cicadas, scattered from the earth right up into the sky. They are on the roofs of the houses, on the branches of the trees and on the spars of the German schooner which lies by the shore. Every night in Pape-ete one is surprised afresh by this deafening noise, which comes out only in the darkness, like the sweet scents with which it is so inextricably bound up in sensation; as if nature, which had been silent in the presence of man, insisted on declaring itself when he has gone. There is too much outcry for understanding; it is like bells ringing inside the skull; one feels a certain uneasiness, a vague stirring of regret and undefined desire.
