188 STORM AND WINTER. 



Provence ? There, sheltered behind a rock, thou shalt find, I assure 

 thee, an Asiatic or African winter. The gorge of Ollioules is worth 

 all the valleys of Syria. 



" No ; I must depart. Others may tarry ; for they have only to 

 gain the East. But me, my cradle summons me : I must see again 

 that glowing heaven, those luminous and sumptuous ruins where my 

 ancestors lived and sang ; I must plant my foot once more on my 

 earliest love, the rose of Asia ; I must bathe myself in the sunshine. 

 There is the mystery of life, there quickens the flame in which my 

 song shall be renewed ; my voice, my muse is the light." 



Thus, then, he takes wing ; but I think his heart must throb as 

 he draws near the Alps, when their snowy peaks announce his 



approach to the terror-haunted gate on whose rocks are posted the 

 cruel children of day and night, the vulture, the eagle all the hooked 

 and talon-armed robbers, athirst for the warm blood of life the 

 accursed species which inspire the senseless poetry of man some, 

 noble murderers, which bleed quickly and drain the flowing tide ; 

 others, ignoble murderers, which choke and destroy ; in a word, all 

 the hideous forms of murder and death. 



I imagine to myself, then, that the poor little musician whose 

 voice is silenced not his ingegno, nor his delicate thought having 



