Then Claude must photograph the mountain itself; and all began to talk of it.
"See the breadth of light and shadow," said Claude; "how the purple depth of the great lap of the mountain is thrown back by the sheet of green light on Lliwedd, and the red glory on the cliffs of Crib Coch, till you seem to look away into the bosom of the hill, mile after mile."
"And so you do," said Headley. "I have learnt to distinguish mountain distances since I have been here. That peak is four miles from us now; and yet the shadowed cliffs at its foot seem double that distance."
"And look, look," said Valencia, "at the long line of glory with which the western sun is gilding the edge of the left hand slope, bringing it nearer and nearer to us every moment, against the deep blue sky!"
"But what a form! Perfect lightness, perfect symmetry!" said Claude. "Curve sweeping over curve, peak towering over peak, to the highest point, and then sinking down again as gracefully as they rose. One can hardly help fancying that the mountain moves; that those dancing lines are not instinct with life."
"At least," said Headley, "that the mountain is a leaping wave, frozen just ere it fell."
"Perfect," said Valencia. "That is the very expression! So concise, and yet so complete."
And Headley, poor fool, felt as happy as if he had found a gold mine.
"To me," said Elsley, "the fancy rises of some great Eastern monarch sitting in royal state; with ample shoulders sloping right and left, he lays his purple-mantled arms upon the heads of two of those Titan guards who stand on either side his footstool."
"While from beneath his throne," said Headley, "as Eastern poets would say, flow everlasting streams, life-giving, to fertilise broad lands below."