John Buchan

The Moon Endureth John Buchan

Book Excerpt: nn and turned a canto of Aristointo halting English couplets. By-and-by it cleared, and Iheaded westward towards Bozen, among the tangle of rocks wherethe Dwarf King had once his rose-garden. The first night I hadno inn but slept in the vile cabin of a forester, who spoke atongue half Latin, half Dutch, which I failed to master. Thenext day was a blaze of heat, the mountain-paths lay thick withdust, and I had no wine from sunrise to sunset. Can you wonderthat, when the following noon I saw Santa Chiara sleeping in itsgreen circlet of meadows, my thought was only of a deep draughtand a cool chamber? I protest that I am a great lover of naturalbeauty, of rock and cascade, and all the properties of the poet: but the enthusiasm of Rousseau himself would sink from the starsto earth if he had marched since breakfast in a cloud of dustwith a throat like the nether millstone. Yet I had not entered the place before Romance revived. Thelittle town--a mere wayside halting-place on the greatmountRead Mor