Free of the cloister! Oh, the rare intoxication of that thought! And quickly upon it came the memory of that other departure, when he had turned his back on the south, had strained his eyes towards the setting sun. Then spring had awakened in the land, everything was promise, save the life upon which he was entering. The spring had gone, and with the spring the happiness of his life. A summer landscape stretched before him; and he rode towards the setting sun. Francesco rode slowly enough. The fresh, free air came joyously to his nostrils. His eyes, less sunken than they had looked for months, though he knew it not, were seeking out those small tokens of beauty, which friendly nature gladly exhibits to so devoted a seeker. Two shrines had he already passed without a Pater Noster, filled with a quick, delirious happiness, which rose continually from his heart to his lips. Through the long, strange, secluded days at Monte Cassino, he had become aware of a profound respite from the ferment of thought. On this morning, however, the sense of self, with all its complications, had utterly vanished. The insistent illusions of the past seemed to have left him. In the high solitudes in which he had been moving, living inviolate behind a stillness not of this world, he had wandered alone, yet not alone, through the spiritual landscape of which Fate had opened the portals. Of the monks he had left he thought without regret. They were not remarkable people, only ordinary men, for whom the veil that separates the seen from the unseen had become thin and sheer. But if not remarkable themselves, a remarkable force was playing through them. Dreamers, yet carrying in their dream the memory of the world's sorrow, they had gained high victory from long meditation on redemption accomplished, and on the spiritual glory that transcends. Yet the knowledge, that by the way of renunciation one comes to the way of fulfillment, had not yet dawned upon Francesco. The sun, long clear of the tree-tops, had reached the valleys, and, as he gazed, the light between the great tree-trunks grew from splendor to splendor, and flashed its level glories through the forest, transfiguring the leaves to flame. The dark trees, which crowned the hill, were giving place, as he descended, to woods of fresher green. In the grass below cyclamen hung their heads dew-freighted. The birds were at matins. Through the soft foliage the sky shone, a lustrous amethyst.