The Invader

d ancient enclosures overflow with emerald and white, rose-colour and purple and gold; a foam of leafage and blossom, breaking spray-like over edges of stone, grey as sea-worn rocks. And all about the city the green meadows and groves burn with many tones of colour, brilliant as enamels or as precious stones, yet of a texture softer and richer, more full of delicate shadows, than any velvet mantle that ever was woven for a queen. Another Festival comes with that strayed Bacchanal October, who hangs her scarlet and wine- coloured garlands on cloister and pinnacle, on wall and tower. And gradually the foliage of grove and garden turns through shades of bluish metallic green, to the mingled splendour of pale gold and beaten bronze and deepest copper, half glowing and half drowned in the low mellow sunlight and purple mist of autumn. Last comes the Festival of Midwinter, the Festival of the Frost. The rime comes, or the snow, and the long lines of the buildings, the fretwork of stone, the battlements, carved pinnacles, and images of saints or devils stand up with clear glittering outlines, or clustered about and overhung with fantasies of ice and snow. Behind the deep blue sky itself seems to glitter too. The frozen floods glitter in the meadows, and every little twig on the bare trees. There is no colour in the earth, but the atmosphere of the river valley clothes distant hills and trees and hedges with ultramarine vapour. Towards evening the mist climbs, faintly ...