Roderick lay observing it all with his arms thrown back and his hands under his head.  “This suits me,” he said; “I could be happy here and forget everything.  Why not stay here forever?” He kept his position for a long time and seemed lost in his thoughts.  Rowland spoke to him, but he made vague answers; at last he closed his eyes.  It seemed to Rowland, also, a place to stay in forever; a place for perfect oblivion of the disagreeable.  Suddenly Roderick turned over on his face, and buried it in his arms.  There had been something passionate in his movement; but Rowland was nevertheless surprised, when he at last jerked himself back into a sitting posture, to perceive the trace of tears in his eyes.  Roderick turned to his friend, stretching his two hands out toward the lake and mountains, and shaking them with an eloquent gesture, as if his heart was too full for utterance.

“Pity me, sir; pity me!” he presently cried.  “Look at this lovely world, and think what it must be to be dead to it!”

“Dead?” said Rowland.

“Dead, dead; dead and buried!  Buried in an open grave, where you lie staring up at the sailing clouds, smelling the waving flowers, and hearing all nature live and grow above you!  That ’s the way I feel!”

“I am glad to hear it,” said Rowland.  “Death of that sort is very near to resurrection.”

“It ’s too horrible,” Roderick went on; “it has all come over me here tremendously!  If I were not ashamed, I could shed a bushel of tears.  For one hour of what I have been, I would give up anything I may be!”

“Never mind what you have been; be something better!”

“I shall never be anything again:  it ’s no use talking!  But I don’t know what secret spring has been touched since I have lain here.  Something in my heart seemed suddenly to open and let in a flood of beauty and desire.  I know what I have lost, and I think it horrible!  Mind you, I know it, I feel it!  Remember that hereafter.  Don’t say that he was stupefied and senseless; that his perception was dulled and his aspiration dead.  Say that he trembled in every nerve with a sense of the beauty and sweetness of life; that he rebelled and protested and shrieked; that he was buried alive, with his eyes open, and his heart beating to madness; that he clung to every blade of grass and every way-side thorn as he passed; that it was the most horrible spectacle you ever witnessed; that it was an outrage, a murder, a massacre!”

“Good heavens, man, are you insane?” Rowland cried.

“I never have been saner.  I don’t want to be bad company, and in this beautiful spot, at this delightful hour, it seems an outrage to break the charm.  But I am bidding farewell to Italy, to beauty, to honor, to life!  I only want to assure you that I know what I lose.  I know it in every pulse of my heart!  Here, where these things are all loveliest, I take leave of them.  Farewell, farewell!”