ossing up wreaths and drifts across the pale halo
of the lamp, and, these vanishing, others succeeded. It was as if the
mist passed by from the river to the north, as if it still passed by in
the silence.

He would shut his window gently, and sit down in his lighted room with
all the consciousness of the white advancing shroud upon him. It was then
that he found himself in the mood for curious labors, and able to
handle with some touch of confidence the more exquisite instruments of
the craft. He sought for that magic by which all the glory and glamour of
mystic chivalry were made to shine through the burlesque and gross
adventures of Don Quixote, by which Hawthorne had lit his infernal
Sabbath fires, and fashioned a burning aureole about the village tragedy
of the _Scarlet Letter_. In Hawthorne the story and the suggestion,
though quite distinct and of different worlds, were rather parallel than
opposed to one another; but Cervantes had done a stranger thing. One read
of Don Quixote, beaten, dirty, and ridiculous, mistaking windmills for
giants, sheep for an army; but the impression was of the enchanted
forest, of Avalon, of the San Graal, "far in the spiritual city." And
Rabelais showed him, beneath the letter, the Tourainian sun shining on
the hot rock above Chinon, on the maze of narrow, climbing streets, on
the high-pitched, gabled roofs, on the grey-blue _tourelles_, pricking
upward from the fantastic labyrinth of walls. He heard the sound of
sonorous plain-song from the monastic choir, of gross exuberant gaiety
from the rich vineyards; he listened to the eternal mystic mirth of those
that halted in the purple shadow of the _sorbier_ by the white, steep
road. The gracious and ornate _chateaux_ on the Loire and the Vienne rose
fair and shining to confront the incredible secrets of vast, dim,
far-lifted Gothic naves, that seemed ready to take the great deep, and
float away from the mist and dust of earthly streets to anchor in the
haven of the clear city that hath foundations. The rank tale of the
_garderobe_, of the farm-kitchen, mingled with the reasoned, endless
legend of the schools, with luminous Platonic argument; the old pomp of
the Middle Ages put on the robe of a fresh life. There was a smell of
wine and of incense, of June meadows and of ancient books, and through it
all he hearkened, intent, to the exultation of chiming bells ringing for
a new feast in a new land. He would cover pages with the analysis of