ABSTRACT
I opened the small door broken in the wall which I formerly mentioned, and stepped out upon the rugged and irregular ground which forms the descent of the rock. I viewed the parting splendours of the closing day, already more than half extinct, and which every moment yielded a further step to the ashy tint of evening. A life-giving breeze played upon my cheek and my forehead. Presently the evening-star came, to assert its prerogative as precursor of the host of heaven. At that moment all grief, all sorrow, all remorse and reproach of things past, seemed to pass away from me. I / was like a new-born child, conscious only of internal sensation, swallowed up in the calm abstraction of existence. This did not last more than a quarter of an hour. But it was like a solitary green island, firm and immovable under the foot of the stranger, in the midst of the never-reposing waves of a tumultuous sea. I gave myself up to it; and it seemed an earnest of everlasting existence.
