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Updated: May 1, 2025
Coming by rail from Lugo or Monforte toward Tuy and Vigo, the train suddenly escapes from the savage cañon where the picturesque Miño rushes and boils beside the road, and emerges into a broad and fertile valley where figs, grapes, and olives grow in profusion. This valley is broad, its soil is of golden hue, and the sky above it is as brilliantly blue as a sapphire.
Thither it was my pride to go before a banquet in the olden years, and coming up to bear in the sapphire goblet the fire of the elder Kings and to watch the King's eye flash and his face grow nobler and more like his sires as he drank the gleaming wine.
The sea, losing its dead leaden colour, had become quite crisp and burnished, darkling into a deep sapphire blue against the horizon; beyond which, at about nine o'clock, there suddenly shot up towards the zenith, a pale, gold aureole, such as precedes the appearance of the good fairy at a pantomime farce; then, gradually lifting its huge back above the water, rose a silver pyramid of snow, which I knew must be the cone of an ice mountain, miles away in the interior of the island.
No glorious sapphire seas and brilliant skies; no golden sunshine pouring down on tawny sands, over which waved the long pinnate leaves of the cocoa-nuts palms; no brilliant-coloured fish that seemed to be waiting to be caught; no glorious life of freedom, with their boat to enable them to glide from isle to isle, where it was always summer; but rain, rain, rain, always rain, pouring down from a lead-black sky.
Far out on the horizon a level line of smoke showed where an unseen steamer was crawling along under the edge of the sapphire sphere. As I reached the climax of my tale an old woman, bent almost double beneath a huge fagot of firewood, passed us on her way to the village.
"I excuse you in advance. "Still, I cannot resist the temptation of chiding your indifference to such a brilliant argument as this," and the Sepoy caused the sapphire to scintillate its mocking rebuke into the eyes of the wretched Gratz.
An iridescent sheen sparkled on its plumage, reflecting sunlight from the scarlet crest, the golden neck and back, the breast of silver, the sapphire wings and tail. Its size alone would have been enough to take David's breath away. He could have stood beneath the arch of that neck with room to spare.
Connla and Nora were so dazzled by the light that hit their eyes, when they had crossed the threshold, that they had to shade them with their hands; but, after a moment or two, they became able to bear the splendour, and when they looked around they saw that they were in a noble hall, whose crystal roof was supported by two rows of crystal pillars rising from a crystal floor; and the walls were of crystal, and along the walls were crystal couches, with coverings and cushions of sapphire silk with silver tassels.
Through this he darted, and came into the room. The young man had his head buried in his hands, so he did not hear the flutter of the bird's wings, and when he looked up he found the beautiful sapphire lying on the withered violets. "I am beginning to be appreciated," he cried; "this is from some great admirer. Now I can finish my play," and he looked quite happy.
To walk out on such a night, when the perturbation of storm is over and the heavens are free, is one of the greatest pleasures offered by this winter life. It is so light that you can read the smallest print with ease. The upper sky looks quite black, shading by violet and sapphire into turquoise upon the horizon.
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