"MacDONALD, George - The Castle" - читать интересную книгу автора (MacDonald George)

to die.
The next day the clouds were higher, and a little wind blew through such
loopholes in the turrets as the false improvements of the inmates had not yet
filled with glass, shutting out, as the storm, so the serene visitings of the
heavens. Throughout the day, the brother took various opportunities of
addressing a gentle command, now to one and now to another of his family. It was
obeyed in silence. The wind blew fresher through the loopholes and the shattered
windows of the great rooms, and found its way, by unknown passages, to faces and
eyes hot with weeping. It cooled and blessed them.-When the sun arose the next
day, it was in a clear sky.
By degrees, everything fell into the regularity of subordination. With the
subordination came increase of freedom. The steps of the more youthful of the
family were heard on the stairs and in the corridors more light and quick than
ever before. Their brother had lost the terrors of aspect produced by his
confinement, and his commands were issued more gently, and oftener with a smile,
than in all their previous history. By degrees his presence was universally felt
through the house. It was no surprise to any one at his studies, to see him by
his side when he lifted up his eyes, though he had not before known that he was
in the room. And although some dread still remained, it was rapidly vanishing
before the advances of a firm friendship. Without immediately ordering their
labours, he always influenced them, and often altered their direction and
objects. The change soon evident in the household was remarkable. A simpler,
nobler expression was visible on all the countenances. The voices of the men
were deeper, and yet seemed by their very depth more feminine than before; while
the voices of the women were softer and sweeter, and at the same time more full
and decided. Now the eyes had often an expression as if their sight was absorbed
in the gaze of the inward eyes; and when the eyes of two met, there passed
between those eyes the utterance of a conviction that both meant the same thing.
But the change was, of course, to be seen more clearly, though not more
evidently, in individuals.
One of the brothers, for instance, was very fond of astronomy. He had his
observatory on a lofty tower, which stood pretty clear of the others, towards
the north and east. But hitherto, his astronomy, as he had called it, had been
more of the character of astrology. Often, too, he might have been seen
directing a heaven-searching telescope to catch the rapid transit of a fiery
shooting-star, belonging altogether to the earthly atmosphere, and not to the
serene heavens. He had to learn that the signs of the air are not the signs of
the skies. Nay, once, his brother surprised him in the act of examining through
his longest tube a patch of burning heath upon a distant hill. But now he was
diligent from morning till night in the study of the laws of the truth that has
to do with stars; and when the curtain of the sunlight was about to rise from
before the heavenly worlds which it had hidden all day long, he might be seen
preparing his instruments with that solemn countenance with which it becometh
one to look into the mysterious harmonies of Nature. Now he learned what law and
order and truth are, what consent and harmony mean; how the individual may find
his own end in a higher end, where law and freedom mean the same thing, and the
purest certainty exists without the slightest constraint. Thus he stood on the
earth, and looked to the heavens.
Another, who had been much given to searching out the hollow places and recesses
in the foundations of the castle, and who was often to be found with compass and