He had gone up, one sunny, windy morning, to the top of a
great cathedral somewhere abroad; I think it was Cologne Cathedral,
the great unfinished marvel by the Rhine; and after a long while in
dark stairways, he issued at last into the sunshine, on a platform
high above the town. At that elevation it was quite still and
warm; the gale was only in the lower strata of the air, and he had
forgotten it in the quiet interior of the church and during his
long ascent; and so you may judge of his surprise when, resting his
arms on the sunlit balustrade and looking over into the Place far
below him, he saw the good people holding on their hats and leaning
hard against the wind as they walked. There is something, to my
fancy, quite perfect in this little experience of my fellow-
traveller's. The ways of men seem always very trivial to us when
we find ourselves alone on a church-top, with the blue sky and a
few tall pinnacles, and see far below us the steep roofs and
foreshortened buttresses, and the silent activity of the city
streets; but how much more must they not have seemed so to him as
he stood, not only above other men's business, but above other
men's climate, in a golden zone like Apollo's!
This was the sort of pleasure I found in the country of which I
write. The pleasure was to be out of the wind, and to keep it in
memory all the time, and hug oneself upon the shelter.
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