Each sound and scent plucked at him in passing: the roadside
started into detail like the foreground of some minute Dutch painter;
every pendent mass of fern, dark dripping rock, late tuft of harebell
called out to him: "Look well, for this is your last sight of us!" His
first sight too, it seemed: since he had lived through twelve Italian
summers without sense of the sun-steeped quality of atmosphere that,
even in shade, gives each object a golden salience. He was conscious of
it now only as it suggested fingering a missal stiff with gold-leaf and
edged with a swarming diversity of buds and insects. The carriage moved
so slowly that he was in no haste to turn the pages; and each spike of
yellow foxglove, each clouding of butterflies about a patch of
speedwell, each quiver of grass over a hidden thread of moisture, became
a marvel to be thumbed and treasured.
From this mood he was detached by the next bend of the road. The way,
hitherto winding through narrow glens, now swung to a ledge overhanging
the last escarpment of the mountains; and far below, the Piedmontese
plain unrolled to the southward its interminable blue-green distances
mottled with forest. A sight to lift the heart; for on those sunny
reaches Ivrea, Novara, Vercelli lay like sea-birds on a summer sea. It
was the future unfolding itself to the boy; dark forests, wide rivers,
strange cities and a new horizon: all the mystery of the coming years
figured to him in that great plain stretching away to the greater
mystery of heaven.
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