All that historic association, that
copious civilization, those grandeurs and graces of art, that variety
and picturesqueness of life, will mellow and deepen your experience
even as time silently touches those old pictures into a more
persuasive and pathetic beauty, and as this increasing summer sheds
ever softer lustre upon the landscape. You will return conquerors and
not conquered. You will bring Europe, even as Aurelian brought
Zenobia captive, to deck your homeward triumph. I do not wonder that
these clouds break away, I do not wonder that the sun presses out and
floods all the air, and land, and water, with light that graces with
happy omens your stately farewell."
But if my faded face looked after them with such earnest and longing
emotion,--I, a solitary old man, unknown to those fair beings, and
standing apart from that band of lovers, yet in that moment bound more
closely to them than they knew,--how was it with those whose hearts
sailed away with that youth and beauty? I watched them closely from
behind my post. I knew that life had paused with them; that the world
stood still.
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