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