As I pursued my way through this enchanted garden, in which the swaying lily stalks bent their perfumed-filled cups down to my cheeks and the trees dropped their gold and purple fruit at my feet, while deep in the bosky thicket of red-leaved shrubs and silken-tufted pine, the melancholy nightingale warbled his liquid melody in slow and plaintive measure, my heart yearned for the sound of a human voice.
“Would that some living being,” I cried, “no matter how bent and twisted in figure, or how discordant in voice, might come forth to meet me in this beautiful solitude.”
I noticed now that my path was ascending a gently sloping hillock. I quickened my pace, for I was anxious to stand upon some elevation, so that I could command a more extensive view of the outlying country.
As I gained the summit of the hillock, a scene of indescribable beauty met my gaze.
As far as the eye could reach I saw unrolled beneath me a landscape of such surpassing loveliness that I paused spell-bound. Imagine a valley shut in by wooded heights, through which a silvery stream courses tranquilly; here a forest giant spreads its far-reaching limbs, and there a clump of fruit trees display their load of golden treasures in the sunlight; on this side flowering shrubs shine white as ivory against the dark greensward, on that with trailing vines and trimmed copses, man’s hand has built many a shady bower of fantastic outline; to this add scores of statues posed in every conceivable attitude of grace and beauty—here a group, there a single figure, and farther on by twos and threes, standing, reclining, sitting, at play, in meditation, listening, reading, thrumming stringed instruments, in attitudes of the chase, casting the quoit, or reaching up to pluck fruit or flowers.
“Is this a dream?” I murmured. “Am I not the sport of some mischievous spirit of the place?”
From this deep reverie the loud barking of Bulger aroused me with shock-like violence.
I looked in the direction of the sound.
Poor, foolish dog, he was gamboling about one of the statues and amusing himself in waking the echoes with his voice.
I was a little nettled by the interruption, and called to him to cease his barking.