A chill wind had begun to blow, lifting in gusts dust into the air and whitening the tree-tops.  As suddenly, calm succeeded.  A cloud of flies droned fretfully about my ears.  And I watched advancing, league-high, transfigured with sunbeams, the enormous gloom of storm.  The sun smote from a silvery haze upon its peaks and gorges.  Wind, far above the earth, moaned, and fell; only to sound once more in the distance in a mournful trumpeting.  Lightnings played along the desolate hills.  The sun was darkened.  A vast flight of snowy, arrow-winged birds streamed voiceless beneath his place.  And day withdrew its boundaries, spread to the nearer forests a bright amphitheatre, fitful with light, whereof it seemed to me Rosinante with her poor burden was the centre and the butt.  I confess I began to dread lest even my mere surmise of danger should engage the piercing lightnings; as if in the mystery of life storm and a timorous thought might yet be of a kin.

We hastened on at the most pathetic of gallops.  Nor seemed indeed the beauteous lightning to regard at all that restless mote upon the cirque of its entranced fairness.  In an instantaneous silence I heard a tiny beat of hoofs; in instantaneous gloom recognised almost with astonishment my own shape bowed upon the saddle.  It was a majestic entry into a kingdom so far-famed.

The storm showed no abatement when at last I found shelter.  From far away I had espied in the immeasurable glare a country barn beneath trees.  Arrived there, I almost fell off my horse into as incongruous and lighthearted a company as ever was seen.

In the midst of the floor of the barn, upon a heap of hay, sat a fool in motley blowing with all his wind into a pipe.  It was a cunning tune he played too, rich and heady.  And so seemed the company to find it, dancers—­some thirty or more—­capering round him with all the abandon heart can feel and heel can answer to.  As for pose, he whose horse now stood smoking beside my own first drew my attention—­a smooth, small-bearded, solemn man, a little beyond his prime.  He lifted his toes with such inimitable agility, postured his fingers so daintily, conducted his melon-belly with so much elegance, and exhaled such a warm joy in the sport that I could look at nothing else at first for delight in him.

But there were slim maids too among the plumper and ruddier, like crocuses, like lilac, like whey, with all their fragrance and freshness and lightness.  Such eyes adazzle dancing with mine, such nimble and discreet ankles, such gimp English middles, and such a gay delight in the mere grace of the lilting and tripping beneath rafters ringing loud with thunder, that Pan himself might skip across a hundred furrows for sheer envy to witness.