Page:The Romance of Isabel, Lady Burton.djvu/159

Rh of a primitive kind, overhanging precipices, and looks into the dark valley, part of which never sees the sun. Here we sang snatches of Linda de Chamounix; the scenery reminds one of it, and comes up to, or even surpasses, all that I have read or thought. In one place we came to an immense rock that had fallen, and was just on the balance over a precipice, and there it has hung for hundreds and thousands of years. The peasants are fait soit peu sauvage, and they dealt us out plainly plenty of chaff, as they gave us water, in the fond belief that we did not understand French. At length we reached the châlet where travellers feed. After dinner at nine o'clock the moon rose, and we went through a splendid forest on a mountain-side, with a torrent dashing below. I lit my cigarette, and went a little ahead of my party. There are sacred moments and heavenly scenes I cannot share with the common herd. There was only one voice which I could have borne to break the silence, and that, like heaven, was so far off as to be like a fable now. At length we arrived at a hut at the top of the Mont Forclaz, a hut where we must have our passport viséd—why, I do not know, as we have long since been in Switzerland. The gendarme grumbled something about "eccentric English who scale the mountains in the night." A hint to be quick is all he gets, and we descend. Now we were so tired that we mounted our mules on the assurance that it would rest us; but such a descent I should never care to do again. The road was steep and unfinished; the moon was under a cloud; there were precipices on each side. The step of the mule sends one upon a