caught the almost level rays of the setting sun, grew brighter and
more brilliantly coruscating, until they seemed ready to melt from the
intensity of their own heat; then this fiery golden colour would
slowly fade and wane into misty purple tones, which lingered long when
there was no more sun. Why did it linger? All the sky that I could see
was blue, and of deepening tone. But the most wonderful sight was yet
to come, when, while the valley was fast darkening, and along the
banks of the Alzou's dry channel the walnut-trees stood like dark
spectres of uncertain form, those rocks began to glow with fire again
as if a wind had risen suddenly and had fanned their dying embers, and
the luminous bloom that spread over them was not that of the earthly
rose, but of the mystical rose of heaven. What I saw was the
reflection of the after-glow, but the glow in the sky was hidden.
Sometimes, as the rocks were fading again and a star was already
glittering like steel against the dark blue, another flush arose in
the dusk, and a faint redness still rested upon the high crags, when
the owl flew forth with a shriek to hunt along the sides of the gorge.

One morning, as I climbed to my eyrie, I was shocked to see my oblong
writing-table, which I had hoisted up there with considerable
difficulty, in an attitude that my neighbour Decros's donkey
endeavoured to strike in his most agitated moments--it was standing
upon two legs, with the others in the air. The heavy branch of a large
fig-tree that had been flourishing for many years upon the overhanging
rock far above had come down upon the very spot where I was accustomed
to sit, and thus the strange antics of the table were accounted for.
From that day the thought of other things above, such as loose rocks,
which might also have conceived an antipathy for the table, and might
not be so considerate towards me as the fig-tree, weakened my
attachment to my ideal writing-place, for the discovery of which I was