THE SOLITARY
Have I ever lived elsewhere than in this circular gorge hollowed in the heart of the rock? Doubtless at three o’clock a raven will not fail to bring me the bread I need, unless the perpetual sound of the falling water can keep me fat! A hundred feet above me, as if it gushed with violence out of the radiant heaven itself, between the bamboos that obstruct it, leaping the sudden verge, the torrent is engulfed and plunges in a vertical column, partly dark and partly luminous,—striking the floor of the cavern with re-echoing thunders.
No human eye could discover where I am. In shadows that only the noonday dissipates, the strand of this little lake, shaking with the unceasing plunge of the cascade, is my habitation. Above, where an inexhaustible torrent falls from the gorge, only this handful of sparkling milk-white water reaches me directly from the generous sky. The stream escapes by this turning; and sometimes, mingled with the cries of the birds in the forest and with this soft gushing near me, I hear the voluble noise of falling waters behind me descending toward the earth.