I flung open my arms, like the Grecian youth in
Ovid, as if I would take in and embrace the balmy atmosphere. [Footnote:
Ovid's Metamorphoses, Book vii] The song of the birds melted me to
tenderness. I would lie by the side of some rivulet for hours, and form
garlands of the flowers on its banks, and muse on ideal beauties, and sigh
from the crowd of undefined emotions that swelled my bosom.
In this state of amorous delirium, I was strolling one morning along a
beautiful wild brook, which I had discovered in a glen. There was one place
where a small waterfall, leaping from among rocks into a natural basin,
made a scene such as a poet might have chosen as the haunt of some shy
Naiad. It was here I usually retired to banquet on my novels. In visiting
the place this morning I traced distinctly, on the margin of the basin,
which was of fine clear sand, the prints of a female foot of the most
slender and delicate proportions. This was sufficient for an imagination
like mine. Robinson Crusoe himself, when he discovered the print of a
savage foot on the beach of his lonely island, could not have been more
suddenly assailed with thick-coming fancies.
Pages:
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
19
20
21
22
23
24
25
26
27
28
29
30
31