When by the continuance of the fall of the land we were certain of this we took off our hats, in spite of the fog which still hung round us very wet and very cold and quite silent, and expected any moment a revelation.
We were not disappointed. Indeed, this attitude of the mind is never disappointed. Without a moment’s warning the air all round us turned quite bright and warm, a strong gust blew through the whirling vapour, and we saw through the veil of it the image of the sun. In a moment his full disc and warmth was on us. The clouds were torn up above us; the air was immediately quite clear, and we saw before us, stamped suddenly upon the sight, a hundred miles of the Pyrenees.
They say that everything is in the mind. If that be true, then he and I saw in that moment a country which was never yet on earth, for it was a country which our minds had not yet conceived to be possible, and it was as new as though we had seen it after the disembodiment of the soul.
The evening sun from over Spain shone warm and low, and every conceivable colour of the purples and the browns filled up the mountain tangle, so that the marvel appeared as though it had been painted carefully in a minute way by a man’s hand; but the colours were filled with light, and so to fill colour with light is what art can never do. The main range ran out upon either side, and the foothills in long series of peaks and ridges fell beneath it, until, beyond, in what might have been sky or might have been earth, was the haze of the plains of Ebro.
“It is no wonder,” said I to my companion, “that the Andorrans jealously preserve their land and have refused to complete this road.”
When I had said that we went down the mountain side. The lower our steps fell the more we found the wealth and the happiness of men. At last walls and ploughed land appeared. The fields grew deep, the trees more sturdy, and under the shelter of peaks with which we had just been acquainted, but which after an hour or so of descent seemed hopelessly above us, ran rivers which were already tamed and put to a use. One could see mills standing upon them. So we went down and down.
There is no rejuvenescence like this entry into Andorra, and there is no other experience of the same sort, not even the finding of spring land after a month of winter sea: that vision of brilliant fields coming down to meet one after the endless grey waste of the sea.
It was, I tell you again, a country completely new, and it might have been of another world, much better than our own.
So we came at last to the level of the valley, and the first thing we saw was a pig, and the second was a child, and the third was a woman. The pig ran at us: for he was lean. The child at first smiled at us because we were human beings, and then divining that we were fiends who had violated his sacred home began to cry. The woman drove the pig from us and took in the child, and in great loneliness and very sad to be so received we went until we should find men and citizens, and these we found of our own size, upstanding and very dignified, and recognised them at once to be of the wealthy and reserved Andorrans. It was clear by their faces that the lingua franca was well known to them, so I said to the first in this universal tongue:
“Sir, what is the name of this village?”