Шарлотта Бронте
The Search After Happiness
They had travelled a long way, when they came to an immense forest, the trees of which bore a large fruit of a deep purple colour of which they tasted and found that it was fit for food. They journeyed in this forest for three days and on the 3rd day they entered a valley or rather a deep glen surrounded on each side by tremendous rocks, whose tops were lost in the clouds. In this glen they continued for some time and at last came in sight of a mountain which rose so high that they could not see the summit though the sky was quite clear. At the foot of the mountain, there flowed a river of pure water bordered by trees which had flowers of a beautiful rose colour. Except these trees nothing was to be seen but black forests and huge rocks rising out of a wilderness which bore the terrible aspect of devastation and which stretched as far as the eye could reach. In this desolate land no sound was to be heard, not even cry of the eagle or the scream of the curlew, but a silence, like the silence of the grave, reigned over all the face of nature unbroken except by the murmur of the river as it slowly wound its course through the desert.
CHAPTER THE III
After they had contemplated this scene for some time O'Donell exclaimed, "Alexander, let us abide here. What need have we to travel farther? let us make this our place of rest!"
"We will," replied Delancy "and this shall be our abode," added he pointing to a cave at the foot of the mountain.
"It shall," returned O'Donell as they entered it.
In this country they remained for many long years and passed their time in a manner which made them completely happy. Sometimes they would sit upon a high rock and listen to the hoarse thunder rolling through the sky and making the mountains to echo and the deserts to ring with its awful voice. Sometimes they would watch the lightning darting across black clouds and shivering huge fragments of rock in its terrible passage. Sometimes they would witness the great glorious orb of gold sink behind the far distant mountains which girded the horizon and then watch the advance of grey twilight and the little stars coming forth in beauty and the silver moon arising in her splendour till the cold dews of night began to fall and then they would retire to their bed in the cave with hearts full of joy and thankfulness.
One evening they were seated in this cave by a large blazing fire of turf which cast its lurid light to the high arched roof and illuminated the tall and stately pillars cut by the hand of nature out the stony rock with a cheerful and red glare that appeared strange in this desolate land, which no fires had ever before visited except those fierce flames of death, which flash from the heavens when robed in the dreadful majesty of thunder. They were seated in this cave then listening to the howling night wind as it swept in mournful cadences through the trees of the forest, which encircled the foot of the mount and bordered the stream which flowed round it. They were quite silent and their thoughts were occupied by those that were afar off and whom it was their fate most likely never more to behold. O'Donell was thinking of his noble master and his young Princes, of the thousands of miles which intervened between him and them, and the sad silent tear gushed forth as he ruminated on the happiness of those times: when his master frowned, not when the gloom of care gave place to the smile of friendship; when he would talk to him and laugh with him and be to him not as a brother, no no, but as a mighty warrior, who relaxing from his haughtiness would now and then converse with his high officers in a strain of vivacity and playful humour not to be equalled. Next he viewed him in his mind's eye at the head of his army. He heard in the ears of his imagination the buzz of expectation of hope and supposition which hummed round him as his penetrating eye with a still keenness of expression was fixed on the distant ranks of the enemy, then he heard his authoritative voice exclaim, "Onward brave sons of freedom, onward to the battle," and lastly his parting words to him, "In prosperity or in misery, in sorrow or in joy, in populous cities or in desolate wildernesses my prayer shall go with you," darted across his mind with such painful distinctness that he at length gave way to his uncontrollable grief at the thought that he should never behold his beloved and mighty commander more and burst into a flood of tears.
