CHAPTER XIX. AT THE FÊTE
If, seated on my rustic bench under a spreading ilex, I was not joining in the pleasures and amusements of those around me, I was tasting an amount of enjoyment to the full as great It was my first holiday after many months of monotonous labor. It was the first moment in which I felt myself free to look about me without the irksome thought of a teasing duty,—that everlasting song of score and tally, which Hans and I sang duet fashion, and which at last seemed to enter into my very veins and circulate with my blood.
The scene itself was of rare beauty. Seated as I was, the bay appeared a vast lake, for the outlet that led seaward was backed by an island, and thus the coast-line seemed unbroken throughout. Over this wide expanse now hundreds of fishing-boats were moving in every direction, for the wind was blowing fresh from the land, and permitted them to tack and beat as they pleased. If thus in the crisply curling waves, the flitting boats, and the fast-flying clouds above, there was motion and life, there was, in the high peaked-mountain that frowned above me, and in the dark rocks that lined the shore, a stern, impassive grandeur that became all the more striking from contrast. The plashing water, the fishermen's cries, the merry laughter of the revellers as they strayed through brake and copse, seemed all but whispering sounds in that vast amphitheatre of mountain, so solemn was the influence of those towering crags that rose towards heaven.
“Have you been sitting there ever since?” asked the cashier, as he passed me with a string of friends.
“Ever since.”
“Not had any breakfast?”
“None.”
“Nor paid your compliments to Herr Ignaz and the Fraulein?”
I shook my bead in dissent.