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 
