nettles. The parasol-pines projected patches of shade across the burning
road, where the sun-baked earth crackled and crumbled to dead dust under
every footstep.

Reaching the little square in front of the Hermitage, he rested from the
ascent, stretching out full length on the crescent of rubblework that
formed a bench near the sanctuary. There silence reigned, the silence of
high hill-tops. From below, the noises of the restless life and labor of
the plain came weakened, softened, by the wind, like the murmuring of
waves breaking on a distant shore. Among the prickly-pears that grew in
close thicket behind the bench, insects were buzzing about, shining in
the sun like buds of gold. Some hens, belonging to the Hermitage, were
pecking away in one corner of the square, clucking, and dusting their
feathers in the gravel.

Rafael surrendered to the charm of the exquisite scene. With reason had
it been called "Paradise" by its ancient owners, Moors from the magic
gardens of Bagdad, accustomed to the splendors of _The Thousand and One
Nights_, but who went into ecstacies nevertheless on beholding for the
first time the wondrous _ribera_ of Valencia!

Throughout the great valley, orange groves, extending like shimmering
waves of velvet; hedges and enclosures of lighter green, cutting the
crimson earth into geometric figures; clumps of palms spurting like jets
of verdure upward toward the sky, and falling off again in languorous
swoons; villas blue and rose-colored, nestling in flowering gardens;
white farmhouses half concealed behind green swirls of forest; spindling
smokestacks of irrigation engines, with yellow sooty tops; Alcira, its
houses clustered on the island and overflowing to the opposite bank, all
of whitish, bony hue, pock-marked with tiny windows; beyond, Carcagente,