While the disciples discoursed in this fashion, the Master worked in the pine-woods outside Pisa. There the sea-winds had thrown down one of the pines, which now hung suspended over a deep pool of glimmering water. Under the lee of the trunk, and nearly hidden, sat the Poet like some wild thing, the way to his retreat pointed out by quantities of scattered papers, covered with the scrawls of unfinished poems. When in his day-dreaming he forgot everything, even the dinner hour, Mary and Trelawny would go off to find him. Tre had constituted himself _cavalier’ sirvente_ to the forsaken lady, and paid her court in corsair fashion which she, in her honest woman-way, found very amusing. The loose sand and hot sun soon knocked her up. She sat down under the cool canopy of the pines and Trelawny continued the Poet-chase alone. He found him at last, but so absorbed by some inner vision, that to avoid startling him, Trelawny drew his attention first by the crackling of the pine-needles. He picked up an Æschylus, a Shakespeare, then a scribbled paper: “To Jane with a guitar”: but he could only make out the two first lines: “Ariel to Miranda. Take This slave of music. . . .” He hailed him, and Shelley, turning his head, answered faintly, “Hello! Come in.” “Is this your study?” Trelawny asked. “Yes,” he answered, “and these trees are my books—they tell no lies. In composing, one’s faculties must not be divided: in a house there is no solitude: a door shutting, a footstep heard, a bell ringing, a voice, causes an echo in your brain, and dissolves your visions. “Here you have the river rushing by you, the birds chattering . . . “The river flows by like Time, and all the sounds of Nature harmonize. . . . It is only the human animal that is discordant and disturbs me. Oh, how difficult it is to know why we are here, a perpetual torment to ourselves and to every living thing!” Trelawny interrupted to tell him that his wife was waiting for him at the edge of the wood. He started up, snatched up his scattered books and papers and thrust them into his hat and jacket pockets, sighing, “Poor Mary! hers is a sad fate. She can’t bear solitude, nor I society—the quick coupled with the dead.” He began to proffer excuses to her, but she, either to hide her emotions or form a Godwinesque lack of any, began in a bantering tone: “What a wild goose you are, Percy! If my thoughts have strayed from my book, it was to the Opera, and my new dress from Florence, and especially to the ivy wreath so much admired for my hair, and not to you, you silly fellow! When I left home my satin slippers had not arrived. These are serious matters. . . .” But in Mary’s pleasantries there was always a note which rang false. CHAPTER XXXIV II SAMUEL XII. 23