Now I found myself at liberty, and pursued a narrow path overhung by rock, with bushy chesnuts starting from the crevices. This led me into wild glens of beech trees, mostly decayed and covered with moss: several were fallen. It was amongst these the holy hermit Gualbertus had his cell. I rested a moment upon one of their huge branches, listening to the roar of a waterfall which the wood concealed. The dry leaves chased each other down the steeps on the edge of the torrents with hollow rustlings, whilst the solemn wave of the forests above most perfectly answered the idea I had formed of Valombrosa,
——where the Etrurian shades
High overarch’d embower.
The scene was beginning to take effect, and the genius of Milton to move across his favourite valley, when the fathers arrived puffing and blowing, by an easier ascent than I knew of.
“You have missed the way,” cried the youngest; “the hermitage, with the fine picture by Andrèa del Sarto, which all the English admire, is on the opposite side of the wood: there! don’t you see it on the point of the cliff?”
“Yes, yes,” said I a little peevishly; “I wonder the devil has not pushed it down long ago; it seems to invite his kick.”
“Satan,” answered the old Pagod very dryly, “is full of malice; but whoever drinks of a spring which the Lord causeth to flow near the hermitage is freed from his illusions.”
“Are they so?” replied I with a sanctified accent, “then I pray thee conduct me thither, for I have great need of such salutary waters.”
The youngest father shook his head, as much as to say, “This is nothing more than a heretic’s whim.”
The senior set forwards with greater piety, and began some legendary tales of the kind which my soul loveth. He pointed to a chasm in the cliff, round which we were winding by a spiral path, where Gualbertus used to sleep, and, turning himself towards the west, see a long succession of saints and martyrs sweeping athwart the sky, and gilding the clouds with far brighter splendours than the setting sun. Here he rested till his last hour, when the bells of the convent beneath (which till that moment would have made dogs howl had there been any within its precincts) struck out such harmonious jingling that all the country around was ravished, and began lifting up their eyes with singular devotion, when, behold! light dawned, cherubim appeared, and birds chirped although it was midnight. “Alas! alas! what would I not give to witness such a spectacle, and read my prayer-book by the effulgence of opening heaven!”
However, willing to see something at least, I crept into the consecrated cleft and extended myself on its rugged surface. A very penitential couch! but commanding glorious prospects of the world below, which lay this evening in deep blue shade; the sun looking red and angry through misty vapours, which prevented our discovering the Tuscan sea.