Page:Idalia, by 'Ouida' volume 3.djvu/23

12 passed with the swiftness of a dream, and beyond the olive belts, and the outer woods of cypress, lay the richness and riot of Italy, all shadowed and softened, and steeped in the moonbeams. Vineyards where the budding grapes were thrusting their first life through the leaves; great chestnut woods, where no ray pierced the massive fans of foliage, and the ground was white as though from snow with the heavy fall of the dropped flowers; fields where melon and gourd, and the fantastic shapes of the wild figtree coiled one in another, fragrant as gods' nectar, when the hoofs trod out the fruit and bruised the amber skins, and broke through the filmy, silvery webs of weaving insects, glittering with the dew; black, silent groves, noiseless and cavernous, with the hollow moan of earth-imprisoned torrents, and lofty aisles of cedars shutting in the broken ivy-covered ruins of the deserted altars of dead gods; vast piles of rocks, and stretching plains and hills covered with ancient strongholds mouldering to dust, and nestling dells where sheeted water mirrored in the starlight slender stems of sea-pines and marble shafts of classic temples. Through them all they went, never drawing rein, with the hound coursing beside them, through the changeful light of the calm late hours, guiding their flight by the stars, and