Little Poems in Prose

XV THE CAKE I WAS travelling. The landscape which spread around me was irresistibly great and noble. Something of it doubtless passed at that moment within my soul. My thoughts flitted with a lightness like that of the atmosphere; vulgar passions, such as hate and profane love, seemed to me as far away as the clouds which defiled at the bottom of the abyss under my feet. My soul seemed to me as vast and as pure as the cupula of the sky which covered me. The memory of earthly things reached my heart weakened and diminished, like the sound of the bells of the unseen cattle which were feeding far, very far, on the slope of the oppo- site mountain. Upon the small unstirred lake, black by reason of its immense depth, there passed sometimes the shadow of a cloud, as if it were the reflection of the cloak of some giant of the air that flew across the heaven, and I remember that this solemn and rare feeling, caused by a motion vast in its utmost silence, filled me with a joy which was not untinged