VI.
The night was calm and beautiful, the full moon shone high in the heavens, and the wind sighed with the sweetest of murmurs among the leaves of the trees.
Manrico arrived at the cloister, swept his glance over the enclosed green and peered through the massive arches of the arcades. It was deserted.
He went forth, turned his steps toward the dim avenue that leads to the Douro, and had not yet entered it when there escaped from his lips a cry of joy.
He had seen floating for an instant, and then disappearing, the hem of the white robe, of the white robe of the woman of his dreams, of the woman whom now he loved like a madman.
He runs, he runs in his pursuit, he reaches the spot where he had seen her vanish; but there he stops, fixes his terrified eyes upon the ground, remains a moment motionless, a slight nervous tremor agitates his limbs, a tremor which increases, which increases, and shows symptoms of an actual convulsion—and he breaks out at last into a peal of laughter, laughter loud, strident, horrible.
That white object, light, floating, had again shone before his eyes, it had even glittered at his feet for an instant, only for an instant.
It was a moonbeam, a moonbeam which pierced from time to time the green vaulted roof of trees when the wind moved their boughs.
Several years had passed. Manrico, crouched on a settle by the deep Gothic chimney of his castle, almost motionless and with a vague, uneasy gaze like that of an idiot, would scarcely take notice either of the endearments of his mother or of the attentions of his servants.
“You are young, you are comely,” she would say to him, “why do you languish in solitude? Why do you not seek a woman whom you may love, and whose love may make you happy?”