Castles -- France; Touraine (France) -- Description and travel
Beautiful as you and I found this region in June, I must admit that its
August charms are more entrancing and pervasive. Instead of the clear
blues, greens and purples of June, the light haze that veils the
mountain tops brings out the same indescribable opalescent shades of
heliotrope, azure and rose that we thought belonged exclusively to the
Dolomites. However, these mountains are first cousins, once or twice
removed, to the Eastern Italian and Austrian Alps and have a good right
to a family likeness. There is something almost intoxicating in the
ethereal beauty of this lake, something that goes to one's head like
wine. I don't wonder that poets and artists rave about its charms, of
which not the least is its infinite variety. The scene changes so
quickly. The glow of color fades, a cloud obscures the sun, the blue and
purple turn to gray in an instant, and we descend from a hillside
garden, where gay flowers gain added brilliancy from the sun, to a
cypress-bordered path where the grateful shade is so dense that we walk
in twilight and listen to the liquid note of the nightingale, or the
blackcap, whose song is sometimes mistaken for that of his more
distinguished neighbor.
This morning when we were resting in a hillside pavilion, near the Villa
Giulia, gazing upon the sapphire lake and the line of purple Alps
beyond, we concluded that nothing was needed to complete the beauty of
the scene but a snow mountain in the distance, when lo! as if in
obedience to our call, a cloud that shrouded some far-off peaks slowly
lifted, revealing to us the shining crest of Monte Rosa. It really
seemed as if Monte Rosa had amiably thrown up that dazzling white
shoulder for our especial delectation. This evening at sunset it will be
touched with delicate pink.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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