The exclamation went up, and was acknowledged by him on the eminence
overhanging them; but at a repetition of it his hand smote the air
sideways. They understood the motion, and were silent; while he, until
Carlo breathed his name in his hearing, eyed the great scene stedfastly,
with the absorbing simple passion of one who has endured long exile, and
finds his clustered visions of it confronting the strange, beloved,
visible life:--the lake in the arms of giant mountains: the far-spreading
hazy plain; the hanging forests; the pointed crags; the gleam of the
distant rose-shadowed snows that stretch for ever like an airy host,
mystically clad, and baffling the eye as with the motions of a flight
toward the underlying purple land.




CHAPTER II

He was a man of middle stature, thin, and even frail, as he stood defined
against the sky; with the complexion of the student, and the student's
aspect. The attentive droop of his shoulders and head, the straining of
the buttoned coat across his chest, the air as of one who waited and
listened, which distinguished his figure, detracted from the promise of
other than contemplative energy, until his eyes were fairly seen and
felt. That is, until the observer became aware that those soft and large
dark meditative eyes had taken hold of him. In them lay no abstracted
student's languor, no reflex burning of a solitary lamp; but a quiet
grappling force engaged the penetrating look. Gazing upon them, you were
drawn in suddenly among the thousand whirring wheels of a capacious and a
vigorous mind, that was both reasoning and prompt, keen of intellect,