We are both
beacons--thou to tell the traveller where to seek safety, and I to warn
him where danger is to be avoided."
There is a dignity in manly suffering, that commands our sympathies. All
who heard this apostrophe to the abode of the Augustines were struck with
its simplicity and its moral. They followed the speaker in silence,
however, to the point where the path makes its first sudden descent. The
spot was favorable to the purpose of Il Maledetto. Though still on the
level of the lake, the convent, the Col, and all it contained, with the
exception of a short line of its stony path, were shut from their view, by
the barrier of intervening rock. The ravine lay beneath, ragged,
ferruginous, and riven into a hundred faces by the eternal action of the
seasons. All above, beneath, and around, was naked, and chaotic as the
elements of the globe before they received the order-giving touch of the
Creator. The imagination could scarce picture a scene of greater solitude
and desolation.
"Signore," said Maso, respectfully raising his cap, and speaking with
calmness, "this confusion of nature resembles my own character.
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