Not only had each mountain at least one cavern, but every really
eligible crag had its ruined castle; and each ruin had its romance,
which clung like the perfume of roses to a shattered vase. There were
rocks shaped like processions of marching monks following uplifted
crucifixes; and farther on, one would have thought that half the animals
had scrambled out of the ark to a height where they had petrified before
the flood subsided. As we wound through the gorge the landscape became
so strange, hewn in such immensity of conception, that it seemed
prehistoric. We, in the blue car, were anachronisms, or so I felt until
I remembered how, in pre-motoring days, I used to think that owning an
automobile must be like having a half-tamed minotaur in the family. As
for the Aigle, she was a friendly, not a vicious, monster, and as if to
make up for her mistakes of yesterday, she was to-day more like a
demi-goddess serving an earthly apprenticeship in fulfilment of a vow
than a dragon of any sort. Swinging smoothly round curve after curve,
the noble car running free and cooing in sheer joy of fiery life, as she
swooped from height to depth, I, too, felt the joy of life as I had
hardly ever felt it before.
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