This magnificent desert, studded with groves of trees, interspersed
with meadows, and traversed by limpid streams, is also embellished by
monuments, columns, and ivy-covered ruins, imitations of time in which
art has copied the old age of stone. That day we knew it would be
visited only by the bright sunbeams, the insects, the birds, and us.
Alas, never were its leaves and its green turf to be watered by so many
tears!
The warm and glowing sky, the light and shade dancing fitfully on the
grass driven by the summer breeze, as the shadow of the wings of one
bird pursuing another; the clear note of the nightingale ringing
through the sonorous air; the distinctness with which the lilies of the
valley, the daisies, and the blue periwinkles which carpeted the
sloping banks of the clear waters, were reflected in their polished
mirror,--all this gladness of Nature saddened us, and this luminous
serenity of a spring morning only seemed to contrast the more with the
dark cloud which weighed upon our hearts. In vain we sought to deceive
ourselves even for a moment by expatiating on the beauty of the
landscape, the brilliant tints of the flowers, the perfumes of the air,
the depth of the shade, the stillness of those solitudes in which the
happiness of a whole world of love might have been sheltered.
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