Page:Life in the Old World - Vol. I.djvu/275

Rh on which stood beautiful trees and country-houses, and below which flowed the powerful Rhone, clear and of a metallic green-blue color; no longer like the little, milk-white stream, which I saw issuing from the cradle of the snow-field at Grimsel, neither like the furious river which comes down later from the highlands, bearing along their melting snows and masses of earth, rolling stones and timber, upon its agitated, turbid waters, down to Lake Leman at Villeneuve. For there, at the close of the Rhone valley, the clear lake receives the wild mountain wanderer into its deep bosom. An extraordinary combat then ensues; the waters of the Rhone and Lake Leman struggle together for mastery, but the earth-weighted waves are vanquished; they sink below the clear waters; the clear waters become uppermost and the Rhone disappears in the embrace of the victor. There he reposes long in the depths; is freed from the foreign elements which he has taken up during his wandering, which have disturbed his character and his life, and—who can tell what takes place down in the depths of the clear lake? The Rhone has vanished there; but he re-appears on the other side of the lake, at Geneva, and then so clear, so crystal-pure and beautiful! He has been born anew; baptized in a pure element. The coloring of the woods and the sky have melted together into his clear water.

This day was cloudy and heavy, yet at the same time the coloring of the Rhone was unspeakably translucent and lovely. When the rapid, gray waters of the Arve hurl themselves into the Rhone, the Rhone adapts the more rapid career of that river, but rarely