He was taken ill at Valence and lay there for a fortnight, oppressed
with some kind of low fever. One night he awoke from a refreshing
sleep, but could not sleep again. It seemed to him afterwards as if
he had lain waiting for something. Anyhow something came. As it
were a faint musical rain had invaded his hearing; but the night was
clear, for the moon was shining on his window-blind. The sound came
nearer, and revealed itself a delicate tinkling of bells. It drew
nearer still and nearer, growing in sweet fulness as it came, till
at length a slow torrent of tinklings went past his window in the
street below. It was the flow of a thousand little currents of
sound, a gliding of silvery threads, like the talking of
water-ripples against the side of a barge in a slow canal--all as
soft as the moonlight, as exquisite as an odour, each sound tenderly
truncated and dull. A great multitude of sheep was shifting its
quarters in the night, whence and whither and why he never knew. To
his heart they were the messengers of the Most High. For into that
heart, soothed and attuned by their thin harmony, not on the wind
that floated without breaking their lovely message, but on the
ripples of the wind that bloweth where it listeth, came the words,
unlooked for, their coming unheralded by any mental premonition, 'My
peace I give unto you.' The sounds died slowly away in the
distance, fainting out of the air, even as they had grown upon it,
but the words remained.
Pages:
498
499
500
501
502
503
504
505
506
507
508
509
510
511
512
513
514
515
516
517
518
519
520
521
522