"
"You have heard of the 'valley of the shadow'? Was your ideal like this?
I told you in Florence of the great poet Dante. You have here at a
glance more beauty and dread conjoined than even his mad fancy could
conjure up. That is the Tessino, braining itself in cataracts. Yonder,
where the clouds make a golden lake, laving forests of firs, lies Italy
as the Goths first beheld it, with their spears quivering. See how the
eagles beat the mist beneath!--that was a symbol that the Roman
standards should be rent."
The other, half in charm, half in awe, listened like one spell-bound,
with his fingers tingling and his eyeballs throbbing.
"This silence," said the elder, "is more freezing to me than the
bitterness of the cold. The very snow-flakes are dumb; nothing makes
discord but the avalanche; it is always twilight; men lie down in the
snows to die, but they are numb and cannot cry."
"Be still," replied the other, "your talk is strangely out of place. I
feel as if my ancestors in their shrouds were beside me."
"You are not wrong," cried the greater, raising his voice till it became
shrill and terrible; "your last moments are passing; that yawning ravine
is your grave. I told you an hour ago how one bad, dark deed would
redeem me.
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