256 The King Orgulous

tains. There the mighty ridge, with its
belts of virgin pinewood and its stony knolls
and pastoral glens, breaks off suddenly in a
precipitous escarpment; and, a thousand
feet below, the land is an immense green
plain, sweeping away to the blue limits of
the north. It is as though the sea had once
on a time run up to the mountain wall and
torn down the tawny rocks for sand and shin-
gle, and had then drawn back into the north,
leaving the good acres to grow green in the
sun. Through the plain winds a river, bright
and slow; in many places the fruitful level
is ruffled with thicket and coppice; and
among the far fields the white walls of farms
and hamlets glitter amid their boskage.
When the clear sunlight fell on that still
expanse of quiet earth, one might see, in
those days, the stone towers and sparkling
pinnacles of the royal city of Sarras, with a
soft blue feather of smoke floating over it.

Often had Desiderius let his eyes rest on
the smoulder and gleam of that busy city,
which was allso hushed and dreamlike in the
distance, little thinking the while that one day
he should dwell within its walls, and play a
strange part in the deeds that men remember.