Page:In Maremma, by Ouida (vol 3).djvu/171

 shadow went beside him on the sand; never to waste the sunlit hours hidden in the bowels of the earth: never to be afraid of every leaf that stirred, of every bird that flew, of every moonbeam that fell across his path!—he laughed and sobbed with the ecstasy of his release.

'O God, Thou hast not forgotten!' he cried in that rapture of freedom.

All the old childish faiths that had been taught to him by dim old altars in stately Mantuan churches came back to his memory and heart.

On the barren rock of Gorgona he had cursed and blasphemed the Creator and creation of a world that was hell; he had been without hope; he had derided all the faiths of his youth as illusions woven by devils to make the disappointment of man the more bitter.

But now, in the sweetness of his liberty, all the old happy beliefs rushed back to him; he saw deity in the smile of the seas, in the light upon the plains.

He was free!

He laughed again, as children do in utter gladness, the great tears coursing down his cheeks.