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But it lay spread before me for a whole perfect day: in the long gleam of the Major, from whose head the diligence swerves away and begins to climb the bosky hills that divide it from Lugano; in the shimmering, melting azure of the southern slopes and masses; in the luxurious tangle of nature and the familiar amenity of man; in the lawn-like inclinations, where the great grouped chestnuts make so cool a shadow in so warm a light; in the rusty vineyards, the littered cornfields and the tawdry wayside shrines.
It was on the banks of a pond lying like a mirror under willow-trees, covered with water-lilies, with here and there large white shimmering spaces where sunbeams fell and lay on the bright surface.
One morning, attracted by the shimmering floor of jewel which Lake Champlain presented under the morning sun, I sat looking out over my neighbor's cornfield, where goldfinch babies were filling the air with their quaint little two-note cries, absorbed in the lovely view, when suddenly I heard a whir of wings and looked up to see a hummer flying about near the nest where madam was sitting.
But the real cause of the silence was plainly in the young woman who walked beside him, and whose effective entrance argued no little practice and experience. She was of a type that catches the eye involuntarily and holds it, tall, well-rounded, fresh-complexioned, with heavy coils of shimmering gold hair.
The dome was supported by rows upon rows of tall, tapering crystal columns, clear as translucent water and green as the grass in spring, . . and between and beyond these columns on the left-hand side there were large, oval-shaped casements set wide open to the night, through which the gleam of a broad lake laden with water- lilies could be seen shimmering in the yellow moon.
Behind the altar hung a shimmering veil of silver tissue; and against the veil and the decorations and the altar-lights the Cardinal's figure stood out in its trailing white robes like a marble statue that had come to life.
I am glad I did; for, do you know, when I had the glasses focused on the dog and the man, all that I could see was a sort of fuzz of dancing vapour, much as if the shimmering air that you see on the heath on a hot day had been gathered up and rolled into a shape. "Ha! ha!" I said, as I put down the glasses; and something in the air, about four yards off, made a sharp hissing sound.
But there it is; no smoky-looking film on the plain, no shimmering distortion of objects in middle-distance, but, to all appearance, a fine sheet of silvery water, two hundred yards distant, about the same in average width, and half-a-mile in length from right to left.
'And how wonderfully the shadows of the tall trunks fall across the white road. How unreal, how phantasmal, is that grey avenue shimmering in the moonlight. 'Yes, isn't the forest ghostlike. And isn't that picturesque, he said, pointing to a booth that had been set up by the wayside.
Sorrento and Vesuvius were over against you; Naples furthest off, melted, in the middle of the picture, into shimmering vagueness and innocence; and the long arm of Posilippo and the presence of the other islands, Procida, the stricken Ischia, made themselves felt to the left. The grand air of it all was in one's very nostrils and seemed to come from sources too numerous and too complex to name.
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