nd the colossus were sublime.

* See _ante_ note on castle meadows.

Sometimes there are topplings of sanguineous clouds, battles of giants
hurling mountains at one another and succumbing beneath the monstrous
ruins of flaming cities. Sometimes only red streaks or fissures appear on
the surface of a sombre lake, as if a net of light has been flung to fish
the submerged orb from amidst the seaweed. Sometimes, too, there is a
rosy mist, a kind of delicate dust which falls, streaked with pearls by a
distant shower, whose curtain is drawn across the mystery of the horizon.
And sometimes there is a triumph, a _cortege_ of gold and purple chariots
of cloud rolling along a highway of fire, galleys floating upon an azure
sea, fantastic and extravagant pomps slowly sinking into the less and
less fathomable abyss of the twilight.

But that night the sublime spectacle presented itself to Pierre with a
calm, blinding, desperate grandeur. At first, just above the dome of St.
Peter's, the sun, descending in a spotless, deeply limpid sky, proved yet
so resplendent that one's eyes could not face its brightness. And in this
resplendency the dome seemed to be incandescent, you would have said a
dome of liquid silver; whilst the surrounding districts, the house-roofs
of the Borgo, were as though changed into a lake of live embers. Then, as
the sun was by degrees inclined, it lost some of its blaze, and one could
look; and soon afterwards sinking with majestic slowness it disappeared
behind the dome, which showed forth darkly blue, while the orb, now
entirely hidden, set an aureola around it, a glory like a crown of
flaming rays. And then began the dream, the dazzling symbol, the singular
illumination of the row of windows beneath the cupola which were
transpierced by the light and looked like the ruddy mouths of furnaces,
in such wise that one might have imagined the dome to be poised upon a
brazier, isolated, in the air, as though raised and upheld by the
violence of the fire. It all lasted barely three minutes. Down below the
jumbled roofs of the Borgo became steeped in violet vapour, sank into
increasing gloom, whilst from the Janiculum to Monte Mario the horizon
showed its firm black line. And it was the sky then which became all
purple and gold, displaying the infinite placidity of a supernatural
radiance above the earth which faded into nihility. Finally the last
window reflections were extinguished, the glow of the heavens depar