The
gentlemen went on talking, and I soon became so absorbed in my
thoughts that their conversation reached me only in fragments.
Wake up, wake up!" repeated the colonel, shaking me by the hand.
"The Takur says that sleeping in the moonlight will do you harm."
I was not asleep; I was simply thinking, though ex-hausted and
sleepy. But wholly under the charm of this enchanting night, I
could not shake off my drowsiness, and did not answer the colonel.
"Wake up, for God's sake! Think of what you are risking!" continued the
colonel. "Wake up and look at the landscape before us, at this wonderful
moon. Have you ever seen anything to equal this magnificent panorama?"
I looked up, and the familiar lines of Pushkin about the golden moon
of Spain flashed into my mind. And indeed this was a golden moon.
At this moment she radiated rivers of golden light, poured forth
liquid gold into the tossing lake at our feet, and sprinkled with
golden dust every blade of grass, every pebble, as far as the eye
could reach, all round us. Her disk of silvery yellow swiftly glided
upward amongst the big stars, on their dark blue ground.
Many a moonlit night have I seen in India, but every time the
impression was new and unexpected. It is no use trying to describe
these feerique pictures, they cannot be represented either in words
or in colors on canvas, they can only be felt - so fugitive is their
grandeur and beauty! In Europe, even in the south, the full moon
eclipses the largest and most brilliant of the stars, so that hardly
any can be seen for a considerable distance round her. In India
it is quite the contrary; she looks like a huge pearl surrounded
by diamonds, rolling on a blue velvet ground. Her light is so
intense that one can read a letter written in small handwriting;
one even can perceive the different greens of the trees and bushes -
a thing unheard of in Europe. The effect of the moon is especially
charming on tall palm trees. From the first moment of her appearance
her rays glide over the tree downwards, beginning with the feathery
crests, then lighting up the scales of the trunk, and descending
lower and lower till the whole palm is literally bathing in a sea
of light. Without any metaphor the surface of the leaves seems
to tremble in liquid silver all the night long, whereas their
under surfaces seem blacker and softer than black velvet. But
woe to the thoughtless novice, woe to the mortal who gazes at
the Indian moon with his head uncovered.
