"How lovely! Oh! I did not think there was any place half so beautiful this side of heaven!"
With his head on his mother's bosom, Felix lay near the window of an upper room, looking out over the Gulf of Genoa.
The crescent curve of the olive-mantled Apennines girdled the city in a rocky clasp, and mellowed by distance and the magic enamelling of evening light, each particular peak rose against the chrysoprase sky like a pyramid of lapis lazuli, around whose mighty base rolled soft waves of golden haze.
Over the glassy bosom of the gulf, where glided boats filled with gay, pleasure-seeking Italians, floated the merry strains of a barcarole, with the silvery echo of "Fidulin" keeping time with the silvery gleam of the dipping oars.
"And the sun went into the west, and down Upon the water stooped an orange cloud, And the pale milky reaches flushed, as glad To wear its colors; and the sultry air Went out to sea, and puffed the sails of ships With thymy wafts, the breath of trodden grass."
"Lift me up, mamma! higher, higher yet. I want to see the sun. There! it has gone--gone down into the sea. I can't bear to see it set to-day. It seemed to say good-bye to me just then. Oh, mamma, mamma! I don't want to die. The world is so beautiful, and life is so sweet up here in the sunshine and the starlight, and it is so cold and dark down there in the grave. Oh! where is Edna? Tell her to come quick and sing something to me."
The cripple shuddered and shut his eyes. He had wasted away, until he looked a mere shadow of humanity, and his governess stooped and took him from his mother's arms as if he were a baby.
"Edna, talk to me! Oh! don't let me get afraid to die. I--"
She laid her lips on his, and the touch calmed their shivering; and, after a moment, she began to repeat the apocalyptic vision of heaven: "And there shall be no night there; and they need no candle, neither light of the sun; for the Lord God giveth them light; and they shall reign for ever and ever."
"But, Edna, the light does not shine down there in the grave. If you could go with me--"
"A better and kinder Friend will go with you, dear Felix."
She sang with strange pathos "Motet," that beautiful arrangement of "The Lord is my Shepherd."
As she reached that part where the words, "Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death," are repeated, the weak, quavering voice of the sick boy joined hers; and, when she ceased, the emaciated face was placid, the great dread had passed away for ever.