"Have you forgotten then that poor wretch in the tumult of the waves, to whom, when he was in his agony, thou, Bertram, didst resign thy own security--and didst descend into the perilous and rocking waters? Deeply, oh deeply, I am in thy debt; far more deeply I would be, when I ask for favours such as this."
"Is it possible? Are you he? But now I recollect your forehead was then hidden by streaming hair; convulsive spasms played about your lips; and your face was disguised by a long beard."
"I am he; and but for thee should now lie in the bowels of a shark, or spitted upon some rock at the bottom of the ocean. But come, my young friend, come into the open air: for in this vault I feel the air too close and confined."
Owls and other night birds which had found an asylum here, disturbed by the steps of the two nightly wanderers, now soared aloft to the highest turrets. At length after moving in silence for some minutes, both stepped out through the pointed arch of a narrow gate-way into the open air upon a lofty battlement. Nicholas seized Bertram's hand, with the action of one who would have checked him at some dangerous point;--and, making a gesture which expressed--"look before you!" he led him to the outer edge of the wall. At this moment the full moon in perfect glory burst from behind a towering pile of clouds, and illuminated a region such as the young man had hitherto scarcely known by description. Dizzily he looked down upon what seemed a bottomless abyss at his feet. The Abbey-wall, on which he stood, built with colossal art, was but the crest or surmounting of a steep and monstrous wall of rock, which rose out of depths in which his eye could find no point on which to settle. On the other side of this immeasurable gulph lay in deep shadow--the main range of Snowdon; whose base was perhaps covered with thick forests, but whose summit and declivities displayed a dreary waste. Dazzled by the grandeur of the spectacle, Bertram would have sought repose for his eye by turning round; but the new scene was, if not greater, still more striking. From his lofty station he overlooked the spacious ruins of the entire monastery, as its highest points silvered over by moonlight shot up from amidst the illimitable night of ravines, chasms, and rocky peaks that form the dependencies of Snowdon. Add to these permanent features of the scene the impressive accident of the time--midnight, with an universal stillness in the air, and the whole became a fairy scene, in which the dazzled eye comprehended only the total impression, without the separate details or the connexions of its different points. So much however might be inferred from the walls which lay near with respect to those which gleamed in the distance--that the towers and buildings of the abbey had been for the most part built upon prominent peaks of rock. Those only, which were so founded, had resisted the hand of time: while the cross walls which connected them, wanting such a rocky basis, had all fallen in. Solemnly above all the chapels and turrets rose, brilliantly illuminated by the moon, the main tower. Upon a solitary crag, that started from the deeps, it stood with a boldness that seemed to proclaim defiance on the part of man to nature--and victorious efforts of his hands over all her opposition. Round about it every atom of the connecting masonry had mouldered away and sunk into heaps of rubbish below--so that all possibility of reaching the tower seemed to be cut off. But beyond this tower Gothic fretwork and imperfect windows rose from the surrounding crags; and in many places were seen pillars springing from two dissevered points of rock--rising higher and higher--and at last inclining towards each other in vast arches; but the central stones that should have locked the architraves of the mighty gates were wanting; and the columns stood to a fanciful eye like two lovers, whom nature and pure inclination have destined for each other, but whom some malicious mischance has separated for ever. Bertram shut his eyes, before the dazzling spectacle: when he opened them again, his guide said with a tranquil voice--in which however a tone of exultation might be distinguished,
"This is Griffith ap Gauvon, of which I lately spoke to you."
All words, as Bertram felt, would fail to express the strength of his emotions: language would but have violated the solemnity of the thoughts which riveted his gaze to the scene before him. He was silent therefore; and in a few moments his companion resumed:
"Here, Bertram, do I often stand on the giddy precipice; and I look down upon the dread tranquillity of the spectacle; and then often I feel as though I wanted no friend; as though nature, the mighty mother, were a sufficient friend that fulfilled all my wishes--a friend far better and wiser than any which the false world can offer. But, Bertram, come a little further!"
He led him, sideways, from that part of the building out of which they had issued by the little portal about 100 yards further. The wall, scarce three feet wide, stood here nearly insulated: and was on the one side bounded by the abyss just described, and on the other by what might have been an inner court--that lay however at least three stories deep below. Nothing but a cross-wall, which rose above the court towards a little tower, touched this main wall. At the extremity of this last, where it broke off abruptly, both stopped. Hardly forty steps removed from them, rose the great tower, which in past times doubtless had been connected with the point at which they stood, but was now divided by as deep a gulph as that which lay to the outside wall, "Further there is nothing," said his guide: "often have I come hither and meditated whether I should not make one step onwards, and in that way release myself from all anxiety about any future steps upon this earth."
"But the power and the grandeur of nature have arrested you and awed you?"
"Right. Look downwards into the abyss before us:--deep, deep below, trickles along, between pebbles and moss and rocky fragment, a little brook: now it is lit up by the moon;--and at this moment it seems to me as if something were stirring; and now something is surely leaping over:--but no--it was deception: often when I have stood here in meditation, and could not comprehend what checked me from taking one bold leap, a golden pillar of moonlight has met me gleaming upwards from the little brook below--(brook that I have haunted in happier days); and suddenly I have risen as if ashamed--and stolen away in silence."