Page:Memoirs of Margaret Fuller Ossoli (IA memoirsofmargare02fullrich).pdf/69

Rh one of the natural pulpits, at one end of the beach. As I approached, I beheld a young fisherman with his little girl; he had nestled her into a hollow of the rock, and was standing before her, with his arms round her, and looking up in her face. Never was anything so pretty. I stood and stared, country fashion; and presently he scrambled up to the very top with her in his arms. She screamed a little as they went, but when they were fairly up on the crest of the rock, she chuckled, and stretched her tiny hand over his neck, to go still further. Yet, when she found he did not wish it, she leaned against his shoulder, and he sat, feeling himself in the child like that exquisite Madonna, and looking out over the great sea. Surely, the “kindred points of heaven and home” were known it his breast, whatever guise they might assume.

‘The sea is not always lovely and bounteous, though generally, since we have been here, she has beamed her bluest. The night of the full moon we staid out on the far rocks. The afternoon was fair; the sun set nobly, wrapped in a violet mantle, which he left to the moon, in parting. She not only rose red, lowering, and of impatient attitude, but kept hiding her head all the evening with an angry, struggling movement. ——— said, “This is not Dian;” and I replied, “No; now we see the Hecate.” But the damp, cold wind came sobbing, and the waves began wailing, too, till I was seized with a feeling of terror, such as I never had before, even in the darkest, and mast treacherous, rustling wood. The moon seemed sternly to give me up to the dæmons of the rock, and the waves to mourn a tragic chorus, till I felt their cold grasp. I suffered so much, that I feared we should never get home without some fatal catas-