Ferdinand came from the shows of royalty and small
falsities of courtiers; the palace, the city, the crowded,
self-seeking, hypocritical world had encompassed him from youth, robbed
him of privacy, cheated him of that repose which brings a man to a
knowledge of himself, and despoils him of those sweet and
tranquillising memories which grow out of a quiet childhood as the wild
flowers spring along the edges of the woods.
Coming, one from the stillness of a solitary island and the other from
the roar and rush of a court and a city, these two met, and there
flashed from one to the other that sudden and thrilling intelligence
which on the instant gives life a new interpretation and the world an
all-conquering loveliness. Nowhere, surely, has the eternal romance
found more significant setting than on this magical island, about which
sea and sky, day and night, weave and weave again those vanishing webs
of splendour in which day-break and evening stars are snared; with such
music throbbing on the air as invisible spirits make when the command
of the master is on them! Here, surely, was the home of this drama of
the soul, the acting of which on the troubled stage of life is a
perpetual appeal to faith and hope and joy! For youth and love are
shining words in the vocabulary of the Imagination--words which contain
the deepest of present and predict the sweetest of future happiness.
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