Page:Fantastics and other Fancies.djvu/124

 THE FOUNTAIN OF GOLD

( is the tale told in the last hours of a summer night to the old Spanish priest in the Hôtel Dieu, by an aged wanderer from the Spanish Americas; and I write it almost as I heard it from the priest's lips.)

"I could not sleep. The strange odors of the flowers; the sense of romantic excitement which fills a vivid imagination in a new land; the sight of a new heaven illuminated by unfamiliar constellations, and a new world which seemed to me a very garden of Eden,—perhaps all of these added to beget the spirit of unrest which consumed me as with a fever. I rose and went out under the stairs. I heard the heavy breathing of the soldiers, whose steel corselets glimmered in the ghostly light;—the occasional snorting of the horses;—the regular tread of the sentries guarding the sleep of their comrades. An inexplicable longing came upon me to wander alone into the deep forest beyond, such a longing as in summer days in Seville had seized me when