II.
Several leagues away, among the precipices, sleeps the lake of Gaube. The green water, three hundred feet in depth, has the reflexes of an emerald.
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The bald heads of the mountains are mirrored in it with a divine serenity. The slender column of the pines is reflected there as clear as in the air; in the distance, the woods clothed in bluish mist come down to bathe their feet in its cold wave, and the huge Vignemale, spotted with snow, shuts it about with her cliffs. At times a remnant of breeze comes to ruffle it, and all those grand images undulate; the Greek Diana, the wild, maiden huntress, would have taken it for a mirror.
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How one sees her come to life again in such sites! Her marbles are fallen, her festivals have vanished; but in the shivering of the firs, at the sound of the cracking glaciers, before the steely splendors of these chaste waters, she reappears like a vision. All the night long, in the outcries of the wind, the herdsmen could hear the baying of her hounds and the whistling of her arrows; the untamed chorus of her nymphs coursed over the precipices; the moon shone upon their shoulders of silver, and on the point of their lances. In the morning she came to bathe her arms in the lake; and more than once has she been seen standing upon a summit, her eyes fixed, her brow severe; her foot trod the cruel snow, and her virgin breasts gleamed beneath the winter sun.