He glanced down into the water whose uneven
floor was diapered with long weedy patches, fragments of fallen rock,
and brighter patches of sand; he inhaled the pungent odour of sea-wrack
and listened to the breathings of the waves. They lapped softly against
the rounded boulders which strewed the shore like a flock of nodding
Behemoths. He remembered his visits at daybreak to the beach--those
unspoken confidences with the sunlit element to whose friendly caresses
he had abandoned his body. How calm it was, too, in this evening light.
Near at hand, somewhere, lay a sounding cave; it sang a melody of moist
content. Shadows lengthened; fishing boats, moving outward for their
night-work, steered darkly across the luminous river at his feet. Those
jewel-like morning tints of blue and green had faded from the water;
the southern cliff-scenery, projections of it, caught a fiery glare.
Bastions of flame. . . .
The air seemed to have become unusually cool and bracing.
Here, on a bench all by himself, sat Count Caloveglia.
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