Page:Life in the Old World - Vol. I.djvu/332

348 to the source of the Arveron. The river issues from the foot of the Mer de Glace. We now see it from the green meadow below, where the icy sea abruptly terminates. Here, as on the precipitous descent, its fantastic icy-figures group themselves still more wildly, and seem to twine their arms round one another, as if to support themselves on the precipice—but in vain! They must be hurled down into the abyss and swell the roaring waters of the Arveron. One fancies that one sees an icy city and its inhabitants paralysed with horror, hurried onward to the gulf. Within the rigid, dead mass, life is yet roaring, but for them with a dissolving, destroying power. The river is born and emancipates itself in its subterranean vault.

One of the icy shapes towered above all the rest, and this was a form of beauty. The figure, the position, the clear, icy-draperies, every thing had a wonderful resemblance to the Sistine Madonna with the child. But this beautiful figure even, sped on towards the sheer descent.

On the evening of this day, the firing of a cannon announced that another ascent of Mont Blanc had been accomplished by some adventurous travelers. My guide blamed these adventurous people, and declared that it was a piece of pure “betise” of Messieurs et Dames, to risk their own lives and the lives of others, to climb up there to see—most frequently—nothing. He himself, had been more than once on these Mont Blanc journeys, and more than once had fallen into the crevices, up to his arms, and had been only saved by means of the rope by which the whole procession of ice-travelers are attached the