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In the island of Palma there is one large central crater, the Caldera de Palma, three leagues in diameter, the walls of which conform closely to the margin of the coast. Von Buch calls this crater "une merveille de la nature," for it distinguishes this isle from all the others, and renders it one of the most interesting and remarkable amongst the volcanic islands of the ocean.
However, when a sunset is glowing behind the mount, these modern intrusions are subdued into insignificance, and there is nothing left to disturb the harmony of the scene. A walk round the ramparts reveals an endless series of picturesque groupings of the old houses with their time-worn stone walls, over which tower the chatelet and La Merveille.
That is a very gorgeous cathedral indeed, painted and gilded 'a merveille', and everywhere stuck about with big and little saints and crucifixes, and pictures incredibly bad but for those in the French cathedral.
Whether out of self-love to their own performances, or complaisance to the performances of others, I cannot exactly say, but certain it is that all the guests acquitted themselves /a merveille/: you would not have imagined the Regent the only one who had gone without dinner to eat the more at supper.
"Cela nous convient a merveille.* Suvorov now he knew what he was about; yet they beat him a plate couture,* and where are we to find Suvorovs now? Je vous demande un peu,"* said he, continually changing from French to Russian. *Do you know the proverb? * That suits us down to the ground. * Hollow. * I just ask you that.
If he was treading upon delicate ground he was unconscious of it, this bon vivant of a Parisian; for he continued rapidly in his enthusiasm, despite a second hopeless attempt of the Vicomte to check him. "You should have seen Babette in the burlesque as Phryne at the Variétés une merveille, mon cher!" he exclaimed, addressing the sous-lieutenant on his right, and he blew a kiss to the ceiling.
Colonel Boyce laughed. "You play that game well, you know. But sure, you need not play it all the time. No, but I never knew you could put on such an air, Harry. You carried it off a merveille. My lord was a whipper-snapper to you. I allow you were a thought too free of your wit. It's a young man's fault. But in the main you were admirable." "You make me uneasy," Harry said.
As it was, however, not a man present had the slightest mistrust of him. He had conquered all their prejudices. The Commodore resumed the short speech he had been making; and when he had concluded, one captain followed another with criticism and fresh proposals Captain Baudus, of Le Paon, the Chevalier de Sainte-Croix, of La Merveille, Captain Denoyre, of the Sanspareil.
And the good man sighed as he chuckled forth his praises. He had come up to the hill in company with the two excellent ladies beside him, of his flock, to make a little visit to his brethren yonder, to the priests who were still here, wrecks of the once former flourishing monastery. He had come to see them, and also to gaze on La Merveille.
Whether one enters through the dark magnificence of the great portals of the Châtelet; whether one mounts the fortified stairway, passing into the Salle des Gardes, passing onward from dungeon to fortified bridge to gain the abbatial residence; whether one leaves the vaulted splendor of oratories for aërial passageways, only to emerge beneath the majestic roof of the Cathedral that marvel of the Early Norman, ending in the Gothic choir of the fifteenth century; or, as one penetrates into the gloom of the mighty dungeons where heroes, and brothers of kings, and saints, and scientists have died their long death as one gropes through the black night of the crypt, where a faint, mysterious glint of light falls aslant the mystical face of the Black Virgin; as one climbs to the light beneath the ogive arches of the Aumônerie, through the wide-lit aisles of the Salle des Chevaliers, past the slender Gothic columns of the Refectory, up at last to the crowning glory of all the glories of La Merveille, to the exquisitely beautiful colonnades of the open Cloister the impressions and emotions excited by these ecclesiastical and military masterpieces are ever the same, however many times one may pass them in review.
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