“Oh, no! I am not to be a feast for you,” he laughed, throwing a clod at them; and they, like thieves found out, fled away in silence. But after a time, while thus gazing out on the country-side, his whole soul attentive to every one of its sounds and sights, all the creatures about him began to draw near him boldly. Ants ran over his back, butterflies again and again settled in his hair, lady-birds walked about his face, and great green caterpillars of the wood explored his boots with lively interest; squirrels too, peeping forth from the forest, their brownish-red tails high in air, seemed deliberating whether they should not approach him. He, however, noticed none of them, plunged as he was in a sort of dreamy state, which the sight of the country had caused in his mind, and that filled him with indescribable sweetness. He felt as though he were himself the very waft of the wind through the corn, the very gleam of the soft green fleece of the grass, the rolling of the streamlets over the heated sands, athwart the meadows redolent of new-mown hay; he felt himself one with the birds flying high above the earth, and crying to the sun with the great incomprehensible clamour of Life: as if he had become the murmur of the fields, the tossing of the pine-forest, the rush and mighty impetus of all growing things; also the mysterious potency of that hallowed Mother, the Earth, who brings forth all in joy and gladness. And he knew himself, knowing that he was all these things in one—both what he saw and what he felt, what he touched and understood, and what he could not even seize but by the merest glimmering—that which many a soul will only see clearly at the instant of death—besides that which only looms vaguely within the human soul, and gathers and lifts it up to the unknown region where it weeps tears of ineffable sweetness, and yet is weighed down as with a stone by an insatiable craving. But all these thoughts passed through his mind like clouds: before he could grasp one clearly, another had taken its place, as absorbing as the former and yet harder to understand. He was awake, and yet he had a drowsy sense as of sleep coming to his eyes; he was led somehow into a land of ecstasy, where he felt as one feels at the most holy moment of the Holy Mass: when the soul floats away in adoration, towards some garden where angels dwell, some happy land—Paradise, or Heaven! Though his was a hard tough nature, by no means given to sentiment, he was nevertheless, during those unearthly moments, ready to fall prostrate on the earth, kiss her with burning kisses, and take her to himself in the most loving embrace. “What is it that has wrought upon me so? It must be the change of air—nothing else,” he grunted to excuse his feelings, rubbing his eyes and knitting his brows. But indeed an overwhelming Power had seized upon him: it was by no means possible to crush down that jocund serenity which now flooded all his being.