Page:Life in the Old World - Vol. I.djvu/257

Rh and if they can purchase fuel for themselves they need not suffer from cold there. The mists and the snow-slush made heaven and earth so gloomy that Lake Leman seemed, as in the old times, a desert-lake, and the country around it “a region lost in cloud.” Sometimes the air was dry and gray-cold, bitter, and biting, extremely disagreeable during a whole week's continuance. Ladies sat with their feet upon chaufferettes both at church and at home, but still suffered from cold hands.

The severe winter was not, however, of long duration, and sometimes, even whilst it lasted, days intervened so enchantingly beautiful, so filled with spring-sun and spring-intimations, that I was, as it were, intoxicated by them, and forgot the cold weather that was passed; but it soon returned. During one interval of this agreeable weather, I paid a visit to Morges, where I spent some beautiful days with my friends, the Alexis Forels. The conversation with them and the little circle of interesting persons who met at their house; together with a visit to the superior school for young girls, which is one of the distinguishing characteristics of that little town, made these days rich. I heard lectures delivered here by excellent teachers; such indeed as I had never heard before; and how happy, I thought, were the young girls, to be thus educated into thinking, discriminating, human beings! I longed to have been once more young, to have sat, as a pupil, upon these benches. Oh! my lost youth!—yet thou wast not lost, thou season of longing and suffering; thou taughtest me much, though I did not then understand it. I have understood it