The interwoven twigs of the
stooping trees were thickly nested; a veritable wilderness of moonlike
and starry flowers ran all to seed amid the nettles and nightshade of
this green silence. And while I ate--for I was hungry enough--Prince
Ennui stood, his hand on Sallow's muzzle, lightly thridding the dusky
labyrinths of the orchard with his faint green eyes.
Mine, too, were not less busy, but rather with its lord than with his
orchard. And the strange thought entered my mind, Was he in very deed
the incarnation of this solitude, this silence, this lawless
abundance? Somewhere, in the green heats of summer, had he come forth,
taken shape, exalted himself? What but vegetable ichor coursed through
veins transparent as his? What but the swarming mysteries of these
thick woods lurked in his brain? As for his hounds, theirs was the
same stealth, the same symmetry, the same cold, secret unhumanity as
his. Creatures begotten of moonlight on silence they seemed to me,
with instincts past my workaday wits to conceive.
And Rosinante! I laughed softly to think of her staid bones beside the
phantom creature this prince had called up to me at mention of
"Twilight.
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