ps. As suddenly, calm succeeded. A cloud of
flies droned fretfully about my ears. And I watched advancing,
league-high, transfigured with sunbeams, the enormous gloom of storm.
The sun smote from a silvery haze upon its peaks and gorges. Wind, far
above the earth, moaned, and fell; only to sound once more in the
distance in a mournful trumpeting. Lightnings played along the
desolate hills. The sun was darkened. A vast flight of snowy,
arrow-winged birds streamed voiceless beneath his place. And day
withdrew its boundaries, spread to the nearer forests a bright
amphitheatre, fitful with light, whereof it seemed to me Rosinante
with her poor burden was the centre and the butt. I confess I began to
dread lest even my mere surmise of danger should engage the piercing
lightnings; as if in the mystery of life storm and a timorous thought
might yet be of a kin.

We hastened on at the most pathetic of gallops. Nor seemed indeed the
beauteous lightning to regard at all that restless mote upon the
cirque of its entranced fairness. In an instantaneous silence I heard
a tiny beat of hoofs; in instantaneous gloom recognised almost with
astonishment my own shape bowed upon the saddle. It was a majestic
entry into a kingdom so far-famed.

The storm showed no abatement when at last I found shelter. From far
away I had espied in the immeasurable glare a country barn beneath
trees. Arrived there, I almost fell off my horse into as incongruous
and lighthearted a company as ever was seen.

In the midst of the floor of the barn, upon a heap of hay, sat a fool
in motley blowing with all his wind into a pipe. It was a cunning tune
he played too, rich and heady. And so seemed the company to find it,
dancers--some thirty or more--capering round him with all the abandon
heart can feel and heel can answer to. As for pose, he whose horse now
stood smoking beside my own first drew my attention--a smooth,
small-bearded, solemn man, a little beyond his prime. He lifted his
toes with such inimitable agility, postured his fingers so daintily,
conducted his melon-belly with so much elegance, and exhaled such a
warm joy in the sport that I could look at nothing else at first for
delight in him.

But there were slim maids too among the plumper and ruddier, like
crocuses, like lilac, like whey, with all their fragrance and
freshness and lightness. Such eyes adazzle dancing with mine, such
nimble and discreet ankles, such gimp English middles, and such