moonlight ride. Sorrow and grief are slow distempers that crouch from the
breeze, and nourish their natures far from swift-moving things. A true
lover is not one of those melancholy flies that shoot and maze over muddy
stagnant pools. He must be up in the great air. He must strike all the
strings of life. Swiftness is his rapture. In his wide arms he embraces
the whole form of beauty. Eagle-like are his instincts; dove-like his
desires. Then the fair moon is the very presence of his betrothed in
heaven. So for hours rode Farina in a silver-fleeting glory; while the
Monk as a shadow, galloped stern and silent beside him. So, crowning them
in the sky, one half was all love and light; one, blackness and fell
purpose.




THE COMBAT ON DRACHENFELS

Not to earth was vouchsafed the honour of commencing the great battle of
that night. By an expiring blue-shot beam of moonlight, Farina beheld a
vast realm of gloom filling the hollow of the West, and the moon was soon
extinguished behind sluggish scraps of iron scud detached from the
swinging bulk of ruin, as heavily it ground on the atmosphere in the
first thunder-launch of motion.

The heart of the youth was strong, but he could not view without quicker
fawning throbs this manifestation of immeasurable power, which seemed as
if with a stroke it was capable of destroying creation and the works of
man. The bare aspect of the tempest lent terrors to the adventure he was
engaged in, and of which he knew not the aim, nor might forecast the
issue. Now there was nothing to illumine their path but such forked