"Smith, Clark Ashton - Tales of Averoigne" - читать интересную книгу автора (Smith Clark Ashton)

Even before I had sufficiently recovered my wits and my eyesight to
take note of the landscape before me, I was struck by a strange
circumstance: Though it had been early afternoon when I entered the
vaults, and though my passage through them could have been a matter
of no more than a few minutes, the sun was now nearing the horizon.
There was also a difference in its light, which was both brighter and
mellower than the sun I had seen above Averoigne; and the sky itself
was intensely blue, with no hint of autumnal pallor.
Now, with ever-increasing stupefaction, I stared about me, and
could find nothing familiar or even credible in the scene upon which I
had emerged. Contrary to all reasonable expectation, there was no
semblance of the hill upon which Faussesflammes stood, or of the
adjoining country; but around me was a placid land of rolling
meadows, through which a golden-gleaming river meandered toward a
sea of deepest azure that was visible beyond the tops of laureltrees...
But there are no laurel-trees in Averoigne, and the sea is hundreds of
miles away: judge, then, my complete confusion and dumbfoundment.
It was a scene of such loveliness as I have never before beheld. The
meadow-grass at my feet was softer and more lustrous than emerald
velvet, and was full of violets and many-colored asphodels. The dark
green of ilex-trees was mirrored in the golden river, and far away I saw
the pale gleam of a marble acropolis on a low summit above the plain.
All things bore the aspect of a mild and clement spring that was verging
upon an opulent summer. I felt as if I had stepped into a land of classic
myth, of Grecian legend; and moment by moment, all surprise, all._
wonder as to how I could have come there, was drowned in a sense of
ever-growing ecstasy before the utter, ineffable beauty of the landscape.
Near by, in a laurel-grove, a white roof shone in the late rays of the
sun. I was drawn toward it by the same allurement, only far more
potent and urgent, which I had felt on seeing the forbidden manuscript
and the ruins of Faussesflammes. Here, I knew with an esoteric
certainty, was the culmination of my quest, the reward of all my mad
and perhaps impious curiosity.
As I entered the grove, I heard laughter among the trees, blending
harmoniously with the low murmur of their leaves in a soft, balmy
wind. I thought I saw vague forms that melted among the boles at my
approach; and once a shaggy, goat-like creature with human head and
body ran across my path, as if in pursuit of a flying nymph.
In the heart of the grove, I found a marble place with a portico of
Doric columns. As I neared it, I was greeted by two women in the
costume of ancient slaves; and though my Greek is of the meagerest, I
found no difficulty in comprehending their speech, which was of Attic
purity.
'Our mistress, Nycea, awaits you,' they told me. I could no longer
marvel at anything, but accepted my situation without question or
surmise, like one who resigns himself to the progress of some delightful
dream. Probably, I thought, it was a dream, and I was still lying in my
bed at the monastery; but never before had I been favored by nocturnal
visions of such clarity and surpassing loveliness. The interior of the
palace was full of a luxury that verged upon the barbaric, and which