I waved my hand, striving in
vain to keep my eyes on one blest, beguiling face of all that glanced
behind them. But, she gone, I turned into the rainy lane once more
with my new acquaintance, discreeter, but not less giddy, it seemed,
than I.
We had not far to go--past a meadow or two, a low green wall, a black
fish-pool--and soon the tumbledown gables of a house came into view.
My companion waved his open fingers at the crooked casements and
peered into my face.
"Ah!" he said, "we will talk, we will talk, you and I: I view it in
your eye, sir--clear and full and profound--such ever goes with
eloquence. 'Tis my delight. What are we else than beasts?--beasts that
perish? I never tire; I never weary;--give me to dance and to sing,
but ever to talk: then am I at ease. Heaven is just. Enter,
sir--enter!"
He led me by a shady alley into his orchard, and thence to a stable,
where we left Rosinante at hob-a-nob with his mare over a friendly
bottle of hay. And we ourselves passed into the house, and ascended a
staircase into an upper chamber. This chamber was raftered, its walls
hung with an obscure tapestry, its floor strewn with sand, and its
lozenged casement partly shuttered against the blaze of sunshine that
flowed across the forests far away to the west.
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