O, not I, Olalla, my Olalla! A bird sang near by;
and in that season, birds were rare. It bade me be of good cheer. And
once more the whole countenance of nature, from the ponderous and stable
mountains down to the lightest leaf and the smallest darting fly in the
shadow of the groves, began to stir before me and to put on the
lineaments of life and wear a face of awful joy. The sunshine struck
upon the hills, strong as a hammer on the anvil, and the hills shook; the
earth, under that vigorous insulation, yielded up heady scents; the woods
smouldered in the blaze. I felt the thrill of travail and delight run
through the earth. Something elemental, something rude, violent, and
savage, in the love that sang in my heart, was like a key to nature's
secrets; and the very stones that rattled under my feet appeared alive
and friendly. Olalla! Her touch had quickened, and renewed, and strung
me up to the old pitch of concert with the rugged earth, to a swelling of
the soul that men learn to forget in their polite assemblies. Love
burned in me like rage; tenderness waxed fierce; I hated, I adored, I
pitied, I revered her with ecstasy. She seemed the link that bound me in
with dead things on the one hand, and with our pure and pitying God upon
the other: a thing brutal and divine, and akin at once to the innocence
and to the unbridled forces of the earth.

My head thus reeling, I came into the courtyard of the residencia, and
the sight of the mother struck me like a revelation. She sat there, all
sloth and contentment, blinking under the strong sunshine, branded with a
passive enjoyment, a creature set quite apart, before whom my ardour fell
away like a thing ashamed. I stopped a moment, and, commanding such
shaken tones as I was able, said a word or two. She looked at me with
her unfathomable kindness; her voice in reply sounded vaguely out of the
realm of peace in which she slumbered, and there fell on my mind, for the
first time, a sense of respect for one so uniformly innocent and happy,
and I passed on in a kind of wonder at myself, that I should be so much
disquieted.

On my table there lay a piece of the same yellow paper I had seen in the
north room; it was written on with pencil in the same hand, Olalla's
hand, and I picked it up with a sudden sinking of alarm, and read, 'If
you have any kindness for Olalla, if you have any chivalry for a creature
sorely wrought, go from here to-day; in pity, in honour, for