ike lapis-lazuli, with
pictured sails upon it as in a church procession. At other times, it
took on a dull metallic lustre as polished silver mingled with the
greenish-yellow tint of ripe lemons, indefinable, strange and delicate,
and the sails would come crowding like the wings of the cherubim in the
background of a Giotto picture.

Forgotten sensations of early youth came back to him, that impression of
freshness which the salt breath of the sea infuses into young blood, the
indescribable effects produced by the changing lights and shadows, the
tints, the smell of the salt water upon the unsullied soul. The sea was
not only a delight to his eyes, but also an inexhaustible wellspring of
peace, a magic fount of youth wherein his body regained health, and his
spirit nobility. The ocean had for him the mysterious attraction of a
mother country, and he abandoned himself to it with filial confidence,
as a feeble child might sink into the arms of an omnipotent mother. And
he received comfort and encouragement; for who ever confided his pain,
his yearnings or his dreams to her in vain?

For him the sea had ever a profound word, some sudden revelation, some
unlocked for enlightenment, some unexpected significance. She revealed
to him, in the secret recesses of his soul, a wound still gaping though
quiescent, and she made it bleed again, but only to heal it with balm
that was doubly sweet. She re-awakened the dragon that slumbered within
him, till he felt once more the terrible grip of its claws, and then she
slew it once for all and buried it deep in his heart never to rise
again. No corner of his being but lay open to the great Consolatrix.

But at times, under the continuous dominion of this influence, under the
persistent tyranny of this fascination, the convalescent was conscious
of a sort of bewilderment and fear, as if both the dominion and
fascination were insupportable to his weak state. The incessant colloquy
between him and the sea gave him a vague sense of prostration, as if the
sublime language were beyond his restricted powers, so eager to grasp
the meaning of the incomprehensible.

But this period of visions, of abstractions, of pure contemplativeness
was of short duration. By degrees, he began to resume his attitude of
self-consciousness, to recover the sensation of his personality, to
return to his original frame of mind. One day at the hour of high noon,
the vast and terrible silence when all life seems sus