"Accursed of God, what art thou here to do?"
"Thou art scarcely grateful; I have led thee out of Egypt, as Moses did his loafing Israelites, and I have transported thee, not in forty years but in a day, into the promised land. Poor fool, whose amusement is tears! Dost thou wish thy wife? Give me thy faith, nothing more. Indeed, thou art right; to-morrow, if thou art not frozen, and if thou pleadest humbly with the lord of Angles, he will make thee keeper of his kennels; it is a fine situation. To-night, sleep on the snow, good knight. Yonder, where the lights are, the lord of Angles embraces thy wife."
Bos was stifling, and thought he was going to die. "Oh Lord my God," said he, falling on his knees, "deliver me from the tempter!" And he burst into tears.
The devil fled, driven by this ardent prayer; the hands of Bos clasped over his breast touched his marriage ring which he carried in his scapulary. He trembled with joy! "Thanks, O Lord, and bring me there in time."
He ran as if he had wings, crossed the threshold at a bound, and hid himself behind a pillar { 403}of the gallery. The procession advanced with torches. When the lady was near him, Bos rose, took her hand and showed her the ring. She recognized it and threw herself into his arms. He turned towards those who were present and said: "I have suffered like our Saviour, and like Him been denied. Men of Bigorre, who have maltreated and denied me, I pray that you will be my friends as of old."
On the morrow Bos went to pour a dish of nuts into a black gulf, where often was heard the voice of the devil; after that he left to confess himself to the pope. On his return he became a hermit in a cavern of the mountain, and his wife a nun in a convent at Tarbes. Both piously did penance, and were worthy after their death to behold God.
A little beyond Lourdes begins the plain, and the sky opens out over an immense space: the azure dome grows pale toward the edges, and its tender blue, graded down by insensible shades, loses itself on the horizon in an exquisite whiteness. { 405}These colors, so pure, so rich, so sweetly blended, are like a great concert where one finds himself enveloped in harmony; the light comes from all sides; the air is penetrated with it, the blue vault sparkles from the dome to the very horizon. Other objects are forgotten; you are absorbed in a single sensation; you cannot help enjoying this unchangeable serenity, this profusion of brightness, this overflowing of golden, gushing light playing in limitless space. This sky of the south corresponds to but one state of the soul, joy; it has but one thought, one beauty, but it gives rise to the conception of full and durable happiness; it sets in the heart a spring of gayety ever ready to flow; man in this country ought to wear life lightly. Our northern skies have a deeper and more varied expression; the metallic reflections of their changing clouds accord with the troubled souls; their broken light and strange shadings express the sad joy of melancholy passions they touch the heart more deeply and with a keener stroke. But blue and white are such lovely hues! From here the north seems an exile; you would never have thought that two colors could give so much pleasure. They vanish into each other, like pleasant sounds that grow into harmony and are blended together. The distant white softens the garish light and imprisons it in a haze of thickened { 406}air. The azure of the dome deadens the rays under its dark tint, reflects them, breaks them, and seems strewn with spangles of gold. This glitter in the sky, these horizons drowned in a misty zone, this transparence of the infinite air, this depth of a heaven without clouds, is worth as much as the sight of the mountains.