For Monsieur Maurice was not
strong. He could not with impunity face snow, and rain, and our keen
Rhenish north-east winds; and it was only when the wintry sun shone out at
noon and the air came tempered from the south, that he dared venture from
his own fire-side. When, however, there shone a sunny day, with what
delight I used to summon him for a walk, take him to my favourite points of
view, and show him the woodland nooks that had been my chosen haunts in
summer! Then, too, the unwonted colour would come back to his pale cheek,
and the smile to his lips, and while the ramble and the sunshine lasted he
would be all jest and gaiety, pelting me with dead leaves, chasing me in
and out of the plantations, and telling me strange stories, half pathetic,
half grotesque, of Dryads, and Fauns, and Satyrs--of Bacchus, and Pan, and
Polyphemus--of nymphs who became trees, and shepherds who were transformed
to fountains, and all kinds of beautiful wild myths of antique Greece--far
more beautiful and far more wild than all the tales of gnomes and witches
in my book of Hartz legends.
At other times, when the weather was cold or rainy, he would take down his
"Musee Napoleon," a noble work in eight or ten volumes, and show me
engravings after pictures by great masters in the Louvre, explaining them
to me as we went along, painting in words the glow and glory of the absent
colour, and steeping my childish imagination in golden dreams of Raphael
and Titian, and Paulo Veronese.
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