Page:Idalia, by 'Ouida' volume 3.djvu/24

Rh holding ever straight for the sea. With sunrise the soldiers of the King, the mercenaríes of Church and of State, would be out over the land; the night alone was liberty. Liberty, for the breath of the wind on their brows, for the splash of river-spray on their lips, for the wild joy of fearless speed, for the fragrance of trampled flowers, for the limitless glory of sight free to range over the width of the earth, for the nameless rapture of living when every sense and pulse of life is hot as with wine, yet is lulled as with sleep, and holds the pain of the world well endured for the sake of one hour of joy;—Liberty, in whose sweetness lies all the ecstasy of life, and in whose loss lies all its anguish.

Through the shallow foam of half-dry watercourses, through the long sear grasses where the cattle couched, through the odorous thickets of wild myrtle, through the withes of osiers where the bittern, wakened, rose with his sullen booming cry, they rode on towards the sea. Down the perilous slopes of ravines, where the loosened shingles shook in showers into yawning depths; down naked breadths of stone where no mosses broke the polished incline, and one uncertain step was death; across bridges high in air, spanning the white smoke of boiling torrents, while the timbera shook and bent