Page:The Career of a Nihilist.djvu/33

intrusion upon this charming solitude. The seat could not be seen from a distance: the long branches of a weeping willow under which it stood wrapped it in darkness.

Pushing aside the yielding branches, Andrey penetrated within the alluring green vault and sat down. When he raised his head and looked out, he jumped to his feet with an exclamation of wonder and delight.

What he saw was only the lake; but from this particular spot, and at this particular moment, it looked so fantastically transfigured that he had some difficulty at first in recognising it. He stood upon a terrace, a few steps from the edge, whose height concealed all the strip of shore between it and the water. The white swollen lake was there, right under his feet, as if by some spell the ground on which he stood, trees, bench, everything, had been detached from their base and were held suspended in the air over the enormous mass of glistening water. Nay, it was too bright to be water. It seemed a gleaming sea of molten silver, without a perceptible ripple, stretching right and left far as the eye could reach, and filling all space with a flood of light reflected from its surface.

Andrey drew near the edge of the little platform that he might see better, and the illusion was at once destroyed. The tops of the houses and the trees at his feet leaped up out of the darkness, dense and murky, against the dazzling brightness of the water. The receding quay with its diminutive benches and well-trimmed plane trees, the white piers projecting into the lake like the tentacles of some strange sea-beast, the gaslit bridge and town, the low Swiss coast looming in the distance wrapped in a blue mist which made coast and sky seem one, so that the watch-fires upon the mountains appeared to be golden stars fixed in the firmament,—all this was a beautiful panorama, but it had not the magic of the other.

He returned to the bench, and was no longer angry with the people who had put it there. He was keenly alive to the beauties of nature, though he loved her fitfully and somewhat selfishly, as those absorbed in a special pursuit so often do.

This was the last time he would look upon these charming sights. It was a leave-taking before going where duty called him. There was in his heart a sense of deep unruffled peace, such as he did not remember feeling for years. The great calm of the scene spoke strongly to his soul. It seemed to him that never had his enjoyment been so full, so pure, so elevating as now.