But
farther away, it was brilliant, and played around the edges of the leaves
and accentuated their delicate pinking. Later we reached the top of a
barren slope, which was flat and smooth, and without a blade of grass to
relieve the monotony of its colour. Sometimes, however, we came upon a
long avenue of beech-trees with moss growing around the foot of their
thick, shining trunks. There were wagon-tracks in these avenues, as if
to indicate the presence of a neighbouring castle that we might see at
any moment; but they ended abruptly in a stretch of flat land that
continued between two valleys, through which it would spread its green
maze furrowed by the capricious meanderings of hedges, spotted here and
there by a grove, brightened by clumps of sea-rushes, or by some field
bordering the meadows which rose slowly to meet the hills and lost
themselves in the horizon. Above these hills, far away in the mist,
stretched the blue surface of the ocean.
The birds are either absent or they do not sing; the leaves are thick,
the grass deadens one's footfalls, and the country gazes at you like
some melancholy countenance. It looks as if it had been created
expressly to harbour ruined lives and shattered hopes, and to foster
their bitterness beneath its weeping sky, to the low rustling of the
trees and the heather.
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