Cow the disheartened air.
‘No swallow circles round the roof,
No chirp redeems the dripping shed;
The very gables frown reproof,
“Why not already fled?”‘
‘Lamia is very unmerciful,’ said the Poet, ‘and does not allow one to forget the sins of one’s youth. But it is quite true that, before the leaves had fallen, one was again on one’s way to Italy; not along this sybaritic coast, but through the austere gorges, now green, now gray, of the Simplon. When, having left the summit behind us, we zigzagged downward, the mountains began to wear a gentler aspect, the vegetation seemed more ample and more unrestrained, the air more soft, the sky farther off and more ethereal; and suddenly I caught sight of a huge granite cross, on the outstretched arms of which was deeply cut the word Italia! I trembled with delight; and, from that hour to this, the word “Italy” has never lost its magic. On we deviously descended, past slopes of intermittent chestnut groves whose leaves, fantastically faded, had not yet fallen, till my driver exclaimed, “Eccolo! Signore!” and there basked Baveno by the edge of the lake in the setting sun, and the Borromean Islands seemed rather floating in the air than resting on the water. It was a true Saint Luke’s summer, where all things seemed stationary in a season of arrested change before the winter winds should arise and everything pass away. I have never again seen Nature in a mood of such absolute abstraction and self-contemplation; and she communicated to one’s spirit her own autumnal detachment from the seasons that are feverish with growth, and the seasons that are shaken by decay.‘
The description of suspended animation in the natural world seemed to infect us with a kindred tranquillity, and for awhile there followed it a sympathetic silence.
‘I know,’ said Lamia at length, ‘your aversion to the curiosity of the interviewer. But is it permissible to ask if it might not be worth while to record some such reminiscences as you have just recited; in a word,—do not be angry with me,— to do what so many other people have done, and to write an autobiography?’
