Yet To Him And To All Of Them I Must Bid Good-Bye, Here And Now.

At this hour to-morrow I shall be far from Cotrone.

Farewell to Capialbi, inspired bookworm! And to Lenormant.

On a day like this, the scholar sailed at Bivona over a sea so unruffled that the barque seemed to be suspended in air. The water's surface, he tells us, is "unie comme une glace." He sees the vitreous depths invaded by piercing sunbeams that light up its mysterious forests of algae, its rock-headlands and silvery stretches of sand; he peers down into these "prairies pelagiennes" and beholds all their wondrous fauna - the urchins, the crabs, the floating fishes and translucent medusae "semblables a des clochettes d'opale." Then, realizing how this "population pullulante des petits animaux marins" must have impressed the observing ancients, he goes on to touch - ever so lightly! - upon those old local arts of ornamentation whereby sea-beasts and molluscs and aquatic plants were reverently copied by master-hand, not from dead specimens, but "pris sur le vif et observes au milieu des eaux"; he explains how an entire school grew up, which drew its inspiration from the dainty ... apes and movements of these frail creatures. This is au meilleur Lenormant. His was a full-blooded yet discriminating zest of knowledge. One wonders what more was fermenting in that restlessly curious brain, when a miserable accident ended his short life, after 120 days of suffering.

So Italy proved fatal to him, as Greece to his father.

Enter page number Go  Previous Next
Page 485 of 488
Words from 130401 to 130655 of 131203