Page:Life in the Old World - Vol. I.djvu/43

Rh on which I first understood, with true emotions, myself and my own life.

June 24th.—Yesterday, all was enveloped in gloom and rain, and to-day, what a change! Yesterday masses of clouds were rolled from the Alps down upon the fields and valleys, threatening to deluge every thing! People talked of nothing but rain and gloomy prospects. The corn was in bloom; the vine ought to be just now in flower, but the rain and the cold!—nothing could ripen in the gardens; nobody could get even a few berries for dessert or preserving. It had rained ever since May. In the higher valleys, it had rained twenty-two days out of the thirty, and a family which had removed thither from Lausanne had been half drowned. It might rain the whole summer, as on some former occasions it had done. In France, the rivers overflowed their banks. People prophesied “une armée de calamités” (A beautiful prospect for summer pleasure.)

That was the case yesterday; but yesterday evening there seemed something like a faint smile upon the deluge-physiognomy of the firmament—something resembling a sunbeam penetrated the cloud-garment of the Jura, and to-day—what splendor! A brisk “Bise” (north wind) has chased, and still chases away, the dense clouds, piles them together on the peaks of the Alps, where they form triumphal arches, garlands, and diadems, which mount higher and ever higher, and Lausanne “la jolie” decks herself in sunshine, with bouquets of gleaming meadows, woods, and gardens, and mirrors herself in Lake Leman, which smiles in heavenly blue towards the deep blue heaven above.