Twilight was beginning to spread its soft, dim wings over the
picturesque banks of the Segre, when after a fatiguing day’s travel we
reached Bellver, the end of our journey.
Bellver is a small town situated on the slope of a hill, beyond which
may be seen, rising like the steps of a colossal granite amphitheatre,
the lofty, enclouded crests of the Pyrenees.
The white villages that encircle the town, sprinkled here and there over
an undulating plain of verdure, appear from a distance like a flock of
doves which have lowered their flight to quench their thirst in the
waters of the river.
A naked crag, at whose foot the river makes a bend and on whose summit
may still be seen ancient architectural remains, marks the old boundary
line between the earldom of Urgel and the most important of its fiefs.
At the right of the winding path which leads to this point, going up the
river and following its curves and luxuriant banks, one comes upon a
cross.
The stem and the arms are of iron; the circular base on which it rests
is of marble, and the stairway that leads to it of dark and ill-fitted
fragments of hewn stone.
The destructive action of time, which has covered the metal with rust,
has broken and worn away the stone of this monument in whose crevices
grow certain climbing plants, mounting in their interwoven growth until
they crown it, while an old, wide-spreading oak serves it as canopy.
I was some moments in advance of my travelling companions, and halting
my poor beast, I contemplated in silence that cross, mute and simple
expression of the faith and piety of other ages.
At that instant a world of ideas thronged my imagination,--ideas faint
and fugitive, without definite form, which were yet bound together, as
by an invisible thread of light, by the profound solitude of those
places, the deep silence of the gathering night and the vague melancholy
of my soul.
Impelled by a religious impulse, spontaneous and indefinable, I
dismounted mechanically, uncovered, commenced to search my memory for
one of those prayers which I was taught when a child,--one of those
prayers that, later in life, involuntarily escaping from our lips, seem
to lighten the burdened heart and, like tears, relieve sorrow, which
takes these natural outlets.
I had begun to murmur such a prayer, when suddenly I felt myself
violently seized by the shoulders.