II.
[FULL-SIZE] -- [Medium-Size]
A little beyond Lourdes begins the plain, and the sky opens out over an immense space: the azure dome grows pale toward the edges, and its tender blue, graded down by insensible shades, loses itself on the horizon in an exquisite whiteness. These colors, so pure, so rich, so sweetly blended, are like a great concert where one finds himself enveloped in harmony; the light comes from all sides; the air is penetrated with it, the blue vault sparkles from the dome to the very horizon. Other objects are forgotten; you are absorbed in a single sensation; you cannot help enjoying this unchangeable serenity, this profusion of brightness, this overflowing of golden, gushing light playing in limitless space. This sky of the south corresponds to but one state of the soul, joy; it has but one thought, one beauty, but it gives rise to the conception of full and durable happiness; it sets in the heart a spring of gayety ever ready to flow; man in this country ought to wear life lightly. Our northern skies have a deeper and more varied expression; the metallic reflections of their changing clouds accord with the troubled souls; their broken light and strange shadings express the sad joy of melancholy passions they touch the heart more deeply and with a keener stroke. But blue and white are such lovely hues! From here the north seems an exile; you would never have thought that two colors could give so much pleasure. They vanish into each other, like pleasant sounds that grow into harmony and are blended together. The distant white softens the garish light and imprisons it in a haze of thickened air. The azure of the dome deadens the rays under its dark tint, reflects them, breaks them, and seems strewn with spangles of gold. This glitter in the sky, these horizons drowned in a misty zone, this transparence of the infinite air, this depth of a heaven without clouds, is worth as much as the sight of the mountains.