THE WINTER NIGHT S^S 



glory that met our eyes. The glowing fire-masses had 

 divided into glistening, many-colored bands, which were 

 writhing and twisting across the sky both in the south 

 and north. The rays sparkled with the purest, most 

 crystalline rainbow colors, chiefly violet-red or carmine 

 and the clearest green. Most frequently the rays of the 

 arch w^ere red at the ends, and changed higher up into 

 sparkling green, which quite at the top turned darker and 

 went over into blue or violet before disappearing in the 

 blue of the sky ; or the rays in one and the same arch 

 might change from clear red to clear green, coming and 

 going as if driven by a storm. It was an endless phan- 

 tasmagoria of sparkling color, surpassing anything that 

 one can dream. Sometimes the spectacle reached such 

 a climax that one's breath was taken away ; one felt that 

 now something extraordinary must happen — at the very 

 least the sky must fall. But as one stands in breathless 

 expectation, down the whole thing trips, as if in a few 

 quick, light scale-runs, into bare nothingness. There is 

 something most undramatic about such a denouement, 

 but it is all done with such confident assurance that one 

 cannot take it amiss ; one feels one s self in the presence 

 of a master who has the complete command of his instru- 

 ment. With a sinorle stroke of the bow he descends 

 lightly and elegantly from the height of passion into 

 quiet, every-day strains, only with a few more strokes to 

 work himself up into passion again. It seems as if he 

 were trying to mock, to tease us. When we are on 



