Formidable was the voice of the tempest, in the midst of the immobility of centuries, turned to stone. Its unaccompanied song, its hopeless, wailing lamentation, was raised in memory of the multitudes that had become ashes, the scattered pageants, the fallen grandeur, the innumerable days of birth and of death—things of an age without name or form. All the melancholy of the world rushed in the wind over that eager, listening soul.
"Ah! I have seized you!" Stelio cried suddenly, with triumphant joy.
The complete and perfect line of the melody had been revealed to him, now belonged to him, and would become immortal in his spirit and in the world.
"Daniele! I have found it!"
He raised his eyes, and saw the first stars in the adamantine sky. He feared to lose the precious treasure he had found. Near, a column he now saw a man with a flickering light at the end of a long pole, and heard the slight sound of the lighting of a lantern. Swiftly and eagerly he jotted down in his notebook, under the lamplight, the notes of the melodic theme, compressing into five lines the message of the elements.
"O day of marvels!" said Daniele Glauro, on seeing Stelio on the steps, as light and agile as if he had robbed the air of some of its elasticity. "May Nature cherish you forever, my brother!"
"Come, come!" said Stelio, taking him by the arm and urging him on with boyish gayety. "I must run!"
He drew him through the narrow streets leading to San Giovanni Elemosinario.
"What you told me one day, Daniele, is quite true. I mean that the voice of things is essentially different from their sound," said Stelio. "The sound of the wind may represent the moans of a frightened throng, the howling of wild animals, the falling of cataracts, the rustle of waving banners, or mockery, threats, and despair. But the voice of the wind is the synthesis of all these sounds: that is the voice which sings and tells of the terrible travail of time, the cruelty of human destiny, the eternal warfare for an illusion eternally born anew."