Then they stepped into the moonlight again, and heard only the solemn
organ stops of the cataract. Through garden-ground they were led by the
little maid, their guide, to a small pavilion that stood on the edge of
the precipitous shore, and commanded a perfect view of the falls. As they
entered this pavilion, a youth and maiden, clearly lovers, passed out,
and they were left alone with that sublime presence. Something of
definiteness was to be desired in the spectacle, but there was ample
compensation in the mystery with which the broad effulgence and the dense
unluminous shadows of the moonshine invested it. The light touched all
the tops of the rapids, that seemed to writhe sway from the brink of the
cataract, and then desperately breaking and perishing to fall, the white
disembodied ghosts of rapids, down to the bottom of the vast and deep
ravine through which the river rushed away. Now the waters seemed to mass
themselves a hundred feet high in a wall of snowy compactness, now to
disperse into their multitudinous particles and hang like some vaporous
cloud from the cliff. Every moment renewed the vision of beauty in some
rare and fantastic shape; and its loveliness isolated it, in spite of the
great town on the other shore, the station with its bridge and its
trains, the mills that supplied their feeble little needs from the
cataract's strength.
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