"Without departing at all from natural forms, I thought to make it suggest the Purgatorio to anyone who remembered the description given of the place _ab extra_ by Ulysses, in the end of the twenty-sixth canto of the Inferno. Of course, that thing there is a mere rock, yet it has certain mountain forms about it. I have put it at a much greater distance, you see, and have sought to make it look a solitary mountain in the midst of a great water. You will discover even now that the circles of the Purgatory are suggested without any approach, I think, to artificial structure; and there are occasional hints at figures, which you cannot definitely detach from the rocks--which, by the way, you must remember, were in one part full of sculptures. I have kept the mountain near enough, however, to indicate the great expanse of wild flowers on the top, which Matilda was so busy gathering. I want to indicate too the wind up there in the terrestrial paradise, ever and always blowing one way. You remember, Mr. Walton?"--for the young man, getting animated, began to talk as if we had known each other for some time--and here he repeated the purport of Dante's words in English: "An air of sweetness, changeless in its flow, With no more strength than in a soft wind lies, Smote peacefully against me on the brow. By which the leaves all trembling, level-wise, Did every one bend thitherward to where The high mount throws its shadow at sunrise." "I thought you said you did not use translations?" "I thought it possible that--Miss Walton (?)" interrogatively this--"might not follow the Italian so easily, and I feared to seem pedantic." "She won't lag far behind, I flatter myself," I returned. "Whose translation do you quote?" He hesitated a moment; then said carelessly: "I have cobbled a few passages after that fashion myself." "It has the merit of being near the original at least," I returned; "and that seems to me one of the chief merits a translation can possess." "Then," the painter resumed, rather hastily, as if to avoid any further remark upon his verses, "you see those white things in the air above?" Here he turned to Wynnie. "Miss Walton will remember--I think she was making a drawing of the rock at the same time I was--how the seagulls, or some such birds--only two or three of them--kept flitting about the top of it?" "I remember quite well," answered Wynnie, with a look of appeal to me. "Yes," I interposed; "my daughter, in describing what she had been attempting to draw, spoke especially of the birds over the rock. For she said the white lapping of the waves looked like spirits trying to get loose, and the white birds like foam that had broken its chains, and risen in triumph into the air." Here Mr. Niceboots, for as yet I did not know what else to call him, looked at Wynnie almost with a start.