Isidore. Aye, all of him is strange.
He called himself a Christian, yet he wears 165
The Moorish robes, as if he courted death.
Ordonio. Where does this wizard live?
Isidore (pointing to the distance). You see that brooklet?
Trace its course backward: through a narrow opening
It leads you to the place.
Ordonio. How shall I know it?
Isidore. You cannot err. It is a small green dell 170
Built all around with high off-sloping hills,
And from its shape our peasants aptly call it
The Giant's Cradle. There's a lake in the midst,
And round its banks tall wood that branches over,
And makes a kind of faery forest grow 175
Down in the water. At the further end
A puny cataract falls on the lake;
And there, a curious sight! you see its shadow
For ever curling, like a wreath of smoke,
Up through the foliage of those faery trees. [180]
His cot stands opposite. You cannot miss it.
Ordonio (in retiring stops suddenly at the edge of the scene, and then turning round to Isidore). Ha!—Who lurks there! Have we been overheard?
There where the smooth high wall of slate-rock glitters——
Isidore. 'Neath those tall stones, which propping each the other,
Form a mock portal with their pointed arch? 185
Pardon my smiles! 'Tis a poor idiot boy,
Who sits in the sun, and twirls a bough about,
His weak eyes seeth'd in most unmeaning tears.
And so he sits, swaying his cone-like head,
And staring at his bough from morn to sun-set, 190
See-saws his voice in inarticulate noises.
Ordonio. 'Tis well, and now for this same wizard's lair.
Isidore. Some three strides up the hill, a mountain ash
Stretches its lower boughs and scarlet clusters
O'er the old thatch.