VI 
  
EVERYONE HAS HIS CHIMERA 
  
  
BENEATH the great gray sky, in a vast and 
dusty plain that hath no road nor grass, with-
out one thistle, without one nettle, I met sev-
eral men walking, bowed over. 
Each of them bore upon his back an enor-
mous chimera, as heavy as a sack of corn or 
coal, or the heavy marching of a Roman infan-
tryman. 
But the monstrous brute was not a dead 
weight. On the contrary, it wrapped round and 
oppressed the man with its powerful and elas-
tic muscles. It clutched with its two great claws 
at the breast of its mount, and its fables head 
crowned the forehead of the man like one of 
those horrific helmets by which the warriors of 
old time hoped to add to the terror of the en-
emy. 
I questioned one of these men, and asked 
him where they were going. He answered me 
that neither he nor the others knew anything 
of this, but that evidently they were going