Oldal 155 [155]
OCR
SEB ÉR EE CLE non's Nothing can stop a heart hurried away by passion. The prince roamed over Egypt, India, and China, going from province to province, from city to city, from house to house, and from cabin to cabin, everywhere seeking the original of the fair image that was engraved on his heart, but im vain. He saw women of all colors and shades, brown, blond, olive, sandy, white, yellow, red, and black, but he did not see her whom he loved. Always seeking and never finding, Carlino at last reached the end of the world. There was nothing more before him but the ocean and the sky. His hopes were at an end; his dream had vanished. As he was walking despairingly up and down the seashore, he spied an old man warming himself im the sun. The prince asked him if there was nothing beyond these waves that stretched as far as the eye could reach. "No, said the old man; "no one has ever discovered anything in this shoreless ocean, or, at least, those who have ventured on it have never returned to tell the story. I remember, however, having heard the old men among us say, when I was a child,” he added, "that their fathers had told them that yonder, a long, long way off, far beyond the horizon, was the Island of the Fates; but woe to the imprudent man who approaches these merciless fairies; he is struck with death at their sight." “What does that matter?” cried Carlino. "I would face death itself to gain my wishes." 119
