nakedness unabashedly enjoying the freedoms of the place. Further out on the moist, firm sand there were individuals strolling in white bathing robes or loose, brightly colored frocks. On the right, an intricate sand castle built by children was bedecked with small flags in the colors of all nations; vendors hawked mussels, pastries, and fruit, kneeling before their wares. On the left, in front of one of the cabanas set at right angles to the others and to the sea and thus closing off that side of the beach, a Russian family had set up camp--men with beards and big teeth; listless, submissive women; a Baltic spinster seated at an easel and emitting cries of despair as she painted the sea; two ugly, good-natured children; and an old nanny in a kerchief, with the gentle, servile manner of a slave. They were cheerful and having great fun, tirelessly shouting the names of the romping, unruly children, using the few Italian words at their disposal to joke with the amusing old man from whom they bought sweets, kissing one another on the cheeks, and caring never a whit whether their very human esprit de corps was being observed. "I shall stay, then," Aschenbach thought. "What better place could there be?" And folding his hands in his lap, he let his eyes run over the sea's great expanse and set his gaze adrift till it blurred and broke in the monotonous mist of barren space. He loved the sea and for deep-seated reasons: the hardworking artist's need for repose, the desire to take shelter from the demanding diversity of phenomena in the bosom of boundless simplicity, a propensity-proscribed and diametrically opposed to his mission in life and for that very reason seductive-a propensity for the unarticulated, the immoderate, the eternal, for nothingness. To repose in perfection is the desire of all those who strive for excellence, and is not nothingness a form of perfection? But as he dreamt his way deep into the void, the horizontal shoreline was suddenly intersected by a human form and, summoning his gaze back from the infinite and bringing it into focus, he saw none other than the beautiful boy coming from the left, walking past him in the sand. He was barefoot in preparation for wading, his slender legs exposed to above the knee, and while his gait was slow it was as light and proud as if he were quite accustomed to going about shoeless. He looked over at the cabanas in the perpendicular row, but no sooner did he spy the Russian family going about its business in cheerful harmony than a storm cloud of angry disdain came over his face: the forehead wrinkled into a dark frown; the mouth rose up, pulling the lips to one side in a bitter grimace that rent the cheek; the brows grew so deeply furrowed that the eyes seemed to have sunk under the pressure, glowering out from beneath them, speaking the language of hate. He looked down, looked back again ominously, then thrust one shoulder forward in a show of repulsion and rebuff, and left his enemies behind. A kind of delicacy or apprehension, something akin to deference or modesty, caused Aschenbach to turn away, as if he had seen nothing. Any serious individual who chances to observe a moment of passion is loath to make personal use of what he has witnessed. Yet he was cheered and shaken at the same time, in other words, elated. This childish fanaticism aimed at so benign a target gave the boy's mute divinity a human perspective: it made an exquisite work of nature-a statue, a mere feast for the eyes-something worthy of deeper consideration and placed the figure of an adolescent, already remarkable for his beauty, against a background enabling one to take him seriously beyond his years. His eyes still averted, Aschenbach listened to the boy's voice, the high, rather weak voice with which, still some way Qif, he greeted his playmates, who were busy building a sand castle. They responded, calling out his name or pet name several times, and Aschenbach listened to it with a certain
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