A great cry came from Francesco's lips.
"My God! This, then, is the end!"
[CHAPTER IX]
THE DAWN
AN undefined melancholy overshadowed the world. Autumn breathed in the wind. The year, red-bosomed, was rushing to its doom.
On the summit of a wood-crowned hill, rising like a pyramid above moor and forest, stood two men silent under the shadows of an oak. In the distance glimmered the sea, and by a rock upon the hillside, armed men, a knot of spears, shone like spirit sentinels athwart the west. Mists were creeping up the valleys, as the sun went down into the sea. A few sparse stars gleamed out like souls still tortured by the mysteries of life. An inevitable pessimism seemed to challenge the universe, taking for its parable the weird afterglow of the west.
Deep in the woods a voice sang wild and solitary in the gathering gloom. Like the cry of a ghost, it seemed to set the silence quivering, the leaves quaking with windless awe. The men who looked towards the sea heard it, a song that echoed in the heart like woe.