Then on a cool and crisp day when clouds were scudding through the sky,
between them there was revealed to me a French town that seemed to bear
the name of Rocher-St.-Pol. There was the river Merle winding its way
through meadow and woodland. A range of hills bounded the horizon and
from the plain rose the Rock. Not far away the ruined castle of "La Dame
Blanche" crowned a steep hill, and close to the town was the Château
Beaumesnil, beetling over the wooded hillside and bristling with conical
towers and burnished girouettes. The Grande Rue of Rocher-St.-Pol I saw
winding between gabled and half-timbered houses towards the church on
the summit, and finally a long flight of stairs called by the people
Jacob's ladder brings the pilgrim to the terrace in front of the church
door. The interior of Ste. Frédigonde showed me the same period of
French Gothic which marks the cathedrals of Notre Dame at Paris and
Rheims. Coming out from Jacob's ladder upon the Parvis, there was a wide
view over the meadows and the river. At the moment when the cathedral
door was disclosed to me, a procession of clergy bearing sacred relics
emerged from the church. It passed between the ranks of prophets and
martyrs whose effigies flank the portal, and vanished with its banners
and vestments down the long incline of Jacob's ladder towards the old
town.
And finally came a dismal day, at the end of which the west was lined
with long streaks of red, and, just before sunset, through a lengthened
break in the gray, I seemed to see an Island in the far Ægean. I think
it must have been somewhere between the Ægina that looks across the
waters to the Athenian Acropolis and the Assos which my friends in their
youth dug from its grave. Let us call it Æginassos. Its buildings as I
dimly saw them are in a remarkable condition of preservation. The white
temple stood out on a promontory over the sea, and brought back to
memory the temple-crowned headland at Sunium. Higher on the
mountain-side was the Forum with its terraces and long colonnades. Steep
and winding paths descended to the ancient port, and far across the
water rose the heights of the Isles of Greece.
Here are the records of what I was privileged to see from the roof
terrace of the Hospital. Made in bed or wheel chair and depending on the
passing imagination of an invalid, the sketches are of necessity crude.
Would that instead they were like the work of Claude or Turner, who were
the great experts at seeing visions in the clouds and in transferring
them to their paper! These drawings will, however, be a reminder that
idle hours can be passed happily even during a long captivity! Opposite
each drawing I have placed some quotations from various writers.
Although these do not describe with exactness the places which no eye
but mine has seen, yet they do picture others very like those which I
saw from the hospital terrace.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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