It was wonderful. At last and for ever my Dark Night of the Soul was
over; no more bitter broodings and mocking whispers and shrinking from
the awful phantom of death continually hovering near me; and, above
all, no more "difficulties"--the rocky barriers I had vainly beat and
bruised myself against. For I had been miraculously lifted over them
and set safely down on the other side, where it was all plain walking.
Unhappily, these blissful intervals would not last long. A
recollection of something I had heard or read would come back to
startle me out of the confident happy mood; reason would revive as
from a benumbed or hypnotized condition, and the mocking voice would
be heard telling me that I had been under a delusion. Once more I
would abhor and shudder at the black phantom, and when the thought of
annihilation was most insistent, I would often recall the bitter,
poignant words about death and immortality spoken to me about two
years before by an old gaucho landowner who had been our neighbour in
my former home.
He was a rough, rather stern-looking man, with a mass of silver-white
hair and grey eyes; a gaucho in his dress and primitive way of life,
the owner of a little land and a few animals-the small remnant of the
estancia which had once belonged to his people.
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