"Don Rodriguez - Chronicles of Shadow Valley" - читать интересную книгу автора (Dunsany Lord)

ancient habitation, and his voice came again, but feebly now and
rambling; he muttered awhile of gardens, such gardens no doubt as
the hidalgos guarded in that fertile region of sunshine in the
proudest period of Spain; he would have known no others. So for
awhile his memory seemed to stray, half blind among those perfumed
earthly wonders; perhaps among these memories his spirit halted,
and tarried those last few moments, mistaking those Spanish
gardens, remembered by moonlight in Spring, for the other end of
his journey, the glades of Paradise. However it be, it tarried.
These rambling memories ceased and silence fell again, with
scarcely the sound of breathing. Then gathering up his strength
for the last time and looking at his son, "The sword to the wars,"
he said. "The mandolin to the balconies." With that he fell back
dead.

Now there were no wars at that time so far as was known in Spain,
but that old lord's eldest son, regarding those last words of his
father as a commandment, determined then and there in that dim,
vast chamber to gird his legacy to him and seek for the wars,
wherever the wars might be, so soon as the obsequies of the
sepulture were ended. And of those obsequies I tell not here, for
they are fully told in the Black Books of Spain, and the deeds of
that old lord's youth are told in the Golden Stories. The Book of
Maidens mentions him, and again we read of him in Gardens of
Spain. I take my leave of him, happy, I trust, in Paradise, for he
had himself the accomplishments that he held needful in a
Christian, skill with the sword and a way with the mandolin; and
if there be some harder, better way to salvation than to follow
that which we believe to be good, then are we all damned. So he
was buried, and his eldest son fared forth with his legacy
dangling from his girdle in its long, straight, lovely scabbard,
blue velvet, with emeralds on it, fared forth on foot along a road
of Spain. And though the road turned left and right and sometimes
nearly ceased, as though to let the small wild flowers grow, out
of sheer good will such as some roads never have; though it ran
west and east and sometimes south, yet in the main it ran
northward, though wandered is a better word than ran, and the Lord
of the Valleys of Arguento Harez who owned no valleys, or anything
but a sword, kept company with it looking for the wars. Upon his
back he had slung his mandolin. Now the time of the year was
Spring, not Spring as we know it in England, for it was but early
March, but it was the time when Spring coming up out of Africa, or
unknown lands to the south, first touches Spain, and multitudes of
anemones come forth at her feet.

Thence she comes north to our islands, no less wonderful in our
woods than in Andalusian valleys, fresh as a new song, fabulous as
a rune, but a little pale through travel, so that our flowers do
not quite flare forth with all the myriad blaze of the flowers of
Spain.