After his terrible wound, after a long, slow, agonising struggle, Andrea
Sperelli came back to life renewed in body and spirit--like another man,
like a creature risen out of the icy waters of death, with a mind swept
bare of all that has gone before. The past had receded into the dim
perspective, the troubled waters had calmed, the mud sunk to the bottom;
his soul was cleansed. He returned to the bosom of Mother Nature, and he
felt her re-inforce him maternally with goodness and with strength.
The guest of his cousin at her villa of Schifanoja, Andrea returned to
life again in sight of the sea. The convalescent drew his breath in
harmony with the deep, calm breath of the ocean; his mind was
tranquillised by the serenity of the horizon. Little by little, in these
hours of enforced idleness and retirement, his spirit expanded, bloomed
out, erected itself slowly, like the grass trodden under foot on the
pathway, and he returned to truth and simple faith, became natural and
free of heart, open to the knowledge and disposed to the contemplation
of pure things.
August was drawing to a close. An ecstatic serenity reigned over the
sea; the waters were so transparent that they repeated every image with
absolute fidelity, and their ultimate line melted so imperceptibly into
the sky that the two elements seemed as one, impalpable and
supernatural.
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