with layers of gloomy clouds tinged with red like fresh-spilt blood. One last look I took at mountain and plain, and never had the mountains seemed so high, never the plains so broad. Then I hang with my head downward and shut my eyes.
"When I opened them, when I saw it all upside down, the sight was marvelous beyond description, The blue hills had lost their struggling height and were a deep, mysterious, swallowing void. Against them the sky stood out, bold, sharp, intense, like a range of hills of translucent sardonyx and aquamarine, immeasurably distant; and the fringe of clouds at the base of the sky seemed a lake of molten amber with billows of tossing, sacrificial fire.
"After the penace I went on pilgrimage to the even Holy rivers of Hindustan, and I sat in cells in lonely shrines, gazing myself into stupefaction. And so, when I thought that I had freed my soul of fleshly desires, I joined holy mendicants of many degrees.
"But I found the holy men to be quarrelsome and jealous, greedy and lustful, kissing to-day the feet of the many-armed gods and to-morrow killing men and poisoning cattle: each following his own Fate, toward the bad or toward the good.
