Page:Idalia, by 'Ouida' volume 2.djvu/321

310, and of joys as of dangers undreamed of by them. When he paused, the Father Superior pressed him eagerly for more; those bold, terse, picturesque words that drew them sketches of different lands and unimagined pleasures with the same rich vigorous sweep as that with which his hand would paint tropic foliage and mountain outline, the stretch of seas and the burning warmth of sun-tanned prairie, held the priestly circle spellbound. Those who had known no existence save that of the cloister from their youth up, heard with an entranced, stupefied amaze, as children hear tales of genii; those who had come to the cloister only when every hope of life had been bruised, and wrung, and killed, heard with a terrible pained look of hunger on their faces, as exiles hear a strain of melody which brings them back the songs of the land they have lost for ever. Both alike hung on the swift flow of the descriptive words, only more warmly coloured by the Neapolitan idiom he still employed, as on some tale of paradise; the worn sallow cheeks flushed, the deadened lustreless eyes flashed, the dropped veiled glance was lifted eagerly, the thin and silent lips were parted with rapid breaths, and once a sigh broke from a monk still in the years of youth—a sigh so