It carried no clouds with
it, and came from such a quarter that it did not trouble the sea
within view. The two castles, black and ruinous as the rocks about
them, were still distinguishable from these by something more
insecure and fantastic in the outline, something that the last storm
had left imminent and the next would demolish entirely. It would be
difficult to render in words the sense of peace that took possession
of me on these three afternoons. It was helped out, as I have said,
by the contrast. The shore was battered and bemauled by previous
tempests; I had the memory at heart of the insane strife of the
pigmies who had erected these two castles and lived in them in mutual
distrust and enmity, and knew I had only to put my head out of this
little cup of shelter to find the hard wind blowing in my eyes; and
yet there were the two great tracts of motionless blue air and
peaceful sea looking on, unconcerned and apart, at the turmoil of the
present moment and the memorials of the precarious past. There is
ever something transitory and fretful in the impression of a high
wind under a cloudless sky; it seems to have no root in the
constitution of things; it must speedily begin to faint and wither
away like a cut flower.
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