The subjects were not very interesting, except as associated with the
individual life and necessities of the little creatures: where the best
nuts were to be found in the neighbourhood, and who could crack them
best, or who had most laid up for the winter, and such like; only they
never said where the store was. There was no great difference in kind
between their talk and our ordinary human conversation. Some of the
creatures I never heard speak at all, and believe they never do so,
except under the impulse of some great excitement. The mice talked; but
the hedgehogs seemed very phlegmatic; and though I met a couple of moles
above ground several times, they never said a word to each other in my
hearing. There were no wild beasts in the forest; at least, I did not
see one larger than a wild cat. There were plenty of snakes, however,
and I do not think they were all harmless; but none ever bit me.
Soon after mid-day I arrived at a bare rocky hill, of no great size, but
very steep; and having no trees--scarcely even a bush--upon it, entirely
exposed to the heat of the sun. Over this my way seemed to lie, and
I immediately began the ascent. On reaching the top, hot and weary, I
looked around me, and saw that the forest still stretched as far as the
sight could reach on every side of me. I observed that the trees, in the
direction in which I was about to descend, did not come so near the
foot of the hill as on the other side, and was especially regretting the
unexpected postponement of shelter, because this side of the hill seemed
more difficult to descend than the other had been to climb, when my eye
caught the appearance of a natural path, winding down through broken
rocks and along the course of a tiny stream, which I hoped would lead
me more easily to the foot. I tried it, and found the descent not at all
laborious; nevertheless, when I reached the bottom, I was very tired and
exhausted with the heat. But just where the path seemed to end, rose
a great rock, quite overgrown with shrubs and creeping plants, some of
them in full and splendid blossom: these almost concealed an opening in
the rock, into which the path appeared to lead. I entered, thirsting for
the shade which it promised.
What was my delight to find a rocky
cell, all the angles rounded away with rich moss, and every ledge and
projection crowded with lovely ferns, the variety of whose forms, and
groupings, and shades wrought in me like a poem; for such a harmony
could not exist, except they all consented to some one end! A little
well of the clearest water filled a mossy hollow in one corner. I drank,
and felt as if I knew what the elixir of life must be; then threw myself
on a mossy mound that lay like a couch along the inner end. Here I lay
in a delicious reverie for some time; during which all lovely forms, and
colours, and sounds seemed to use my brain as a common hall, where they
could come and go, unbidden and unexcused. I had never imagined that
such capacity for simple happiness lay in me, as was now awakened by
this assembly of forms and spiritual sensations, which yet were far too
vague to admit of being translated into any shape common to my own and
another mind. I had lain for an hour, I should suppose, though it may
have been far longer, when, the harmonious tumult in my mind having
somewhat relaxed, I became aware that my eyes were fixed on a strange,
time-worn bas-relief on the rock opposite to me. This, after some
pondering, I concluded to represent Pygmalion, as he awaited the
quickening of his statue. The sculptor sat more rigid than the figure to
which his eyes were turned. That seemed about to step from its pedestal
and embrace the man, who waited rather than expected.