Countess had received the handful of wind-flowers that, fresh from a
sunrise on the hills, he had laid one morning among her toilet-boxes.
The Countess Clarice had stared and laughed, and every one of his
acquaintance, Alfieri even, would have echoed her laugh; but one man at
least had felt the divine commotion of nature's touch, had felt and
interpreted it, in words as fresh as spring verdure, in the pages of a
volume that Odo now drew from his pocket.

"I longed to dream, but some unexpected spectacle continually distracted
me from my musings. Here immense rocks hung their ruinous masses above
my head; there the thick mist of roaring waterfalls enveloped me; or
some unceasing torrent tore open at my very feet an abyss into which the
gaze feared to plunge. Sometimes I was lost in the twilight of a thick
wood; sometimes, on emerging from a dark ravine, my eyes were charmed by
the sight of an open meadow...Nature seemed to revel in unwonted
contrasts; such varieties of aspect had she united in one spot. Here was
an eastern prospect bright with spring flowers, while autumn fruits
ripened to the south and the northern face of the scene was still locked
in wintry frosts...Add to this the different angles at which the peaks
took the light, the chiaroscuro of sun and shade, and the variations of
light resulting from it at morning and evening...sum up the impressions
I have tried to describe and you will be able to form an idea of the
enchanting situation in which I found myself...The scene has indeed a
magical, a supernatural quality, which so ravishes the spirit and senses
that one seems to lose all exact notion of one's surroundings and
identity."

This was a new language to eighteenth-century readers. Already it had
swept through the length and breadth of France, like a spring storm-wind
bursting open doors and windows, and filling close candle-lit rooms with