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rocks and high towering clouds where, through the shattered mist, we had just before seen them resting, sparkled below and around on ten thousand raindrops; we looked down on a sea of dark-topped vines and olives, intersected by the dim serpentine Arno, bearing southward from Castello to Florence. Pistoia with her many domes and towers was below, sunk in hot haze beside the level highway of the Ombrone, and edged with shining houses beyond, the white line of road to Serravalle. This was, in fact, one of three views which our ascent successively afforded us. Splintered rocks, rich in verdure climbing and clinging, gay with butterflies and alive with simmering cicale; and over the rocks, shorn russet cornfields, planted with the cherry and the pear, composed another. But, more impressive perhaps than even the vast Valdarno, and momently assuming a nearer and more personal importance, was our third prospect: the tossed and distempered Apennines-a dappled scene of a thousand lights and blue shadows, curves, and seams, and crests, topped by the ragged clouds that floated at last into one long white floor above, whilst an amethystine gleam, like some false sunset, burned behind their purple summits.

XXXI Meanwhile our conversation ran most on the little things of home, on the dear country I was to see a few weeks earlier than Désirée, on my own plans, more especially fears and hopes for that new life which was awaiting me. How many meaningless fancies-foolish alarms-she dispersed with the smiling wisdom of her sunbright courage, with the counsels of the royal 'heart of innocence'! This fair scene we felt rather than studied; and if any tone of human reflectiveness, any

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'pathetic fallacy', has entered my brief description, are due to that other and more refracting mist of y through which I now see it. No space was then for interferences:

But we received the shock of mighty scenes
On simple minds with a pure natural joy:

roused only so far to conscious harmony with nature,
we could, as it were by right, repeat aloud our favou
passages-six-line masterpieces of colour and condensa
from the Commedia', or miracles of sweetness
'drawn out' from those pages on which Milton
emblazoned his twin landscapes of immortal beauty.
we reached the white cottage of La Collina. It w
hurriedly by; and yet the hour whose unalloyed ha
'moments' I would fain eternalize in recollection, wa
crisis for me in the inner life, far beyond a year's worl
experience: between base and summit of this ascent I
climbed, I might truly say, from boyhood to manhood.
had measured in some degree the worth of the love I
seeking the high generosity of nature-the clear intell
-the stainless unselfishness. Should I speak now?
no: I must prove myself worthy the prize: I could
dare offer a mere love for love to one so dowered with Go
best gifts; a mere child's heart, however faithful, to th
heiress in her own right to the nobler nobility of Natu
I could not speak; and something whispered, I had
need of speaking. La Collina was a Pisgah whence
looked onwards over a life rich in the promise of blessin
so profound, happiness so august and plenary, that G
Himself, with His own best, I thought, could hard
better it.

XXXII Then, to crown all by the sharpness of its co

tion, they

of years for such

ure, that favourite

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ature.

ad no ence I

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God hardly

= con

trast, came a farewell such as, in Dante's pathetic phrase,
'leaves the dear one even more endeared'. A fresh storm
was gathering over the forest, and whilst on the summit of
the pass I awaited the diligence from Pistoia, Désirée drove
quickly down. Our parting words had been few: I should
have been little happy, and little sad, if I could have |

'said how much'. But before the first turn of the road-
way had hidden her broad hat and golden hair, from some
fancy she stopped the light carriage and looked round.
However resolved, who could resist such opportunity? In
a moment I stood again beside her; the bond of reserve
was broken, and my second farewell was whispered fast
in words of tenderness and confession-words unheard
amidst the immediate distraction of approaching wheels,
and the downrush of a sudden rain. . . . Hastily, as after
crime, I ran back to La Collina: another confused and
forgotten moment, and I was hurrying down a bare
Alpine valley, where a chill mist arched out the sky, and
snow glistened on the upper peaks, and the dark torrent
Reno was rushing northwards, and away from Désirée.
The sound of this youthful noisy companion and monitor
was hateful; I heard accents of everlasting farewell
in its hoarse under-murmurings. But when, three days
later, the road at Malalbergo below desolate Ferrara
finally crossed that stream, now slowly straining its waters
through the marshes of Comacchio into the Adriatic, I
looked on the Reno as a friend, and blessed it for remem-
brance of its mountain source high over Valdicampo. I
saw but one image, and thought but one thought, during
the homeward journey. From that visit to Venice the
single picture I can recall is a child seated in some palace
balcony, its cradle. As my gondola passed, the pure

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little hand held out a few green leaves above me ; beams touched the blue dress at her shoulder; her deli features were chequered with warm bars of light, shadowed by torrents of golden hair that reminded n Désirée's. At Milan I looked on indeed, but as i dreams, where, flickering with a thousand pinnacles, marble wonder of the Duomo went up like a white fire heaven; but with the real eyes saw only the fresco which the wedded ecstasy of Joseph, chosen by the mir of the budding palm-rod for that legendary betrothal, kneeling before his royal bride, has been represented Luini with an almost superhuman intensity of passion abandonment.

XXXIII Many years later, and I am passing w must be, I know, almost the anniversary of the day of Collina, near a seaside city of Neustrian France. Grey its depths, pale rose and emerald in its shallows, the ripples at my feet with a low sweet murmur, a lisp when children come close and whisper their secrets. Yie ing to the pleasure of an ancient superstition, I count waves, and fancy the tenth rolls in with a whiter mass subdued undertone of power. If there were any spirit voice from the deep, I should hear it now: for there is human sound but the measured beat of pile-drivers at t harbour; no human sight to break the spell but a f idle fisher-boats, their brown sails spread indeed, motionless. The heavy sun, sinking like Adonis into a b of dense violet, sends a few ruddy rays to the shore; b reserving for his own regions his more especial glo Overweaves the pale heavens above with a golden networ a wide web of living flashes, through which the last arro of his radiance strike upward into the azure grey of t

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