"'Mon Dieu! Is this ice—these blocks of dirty alabaster?'
"Alas! she was justified. This torrent of majestic crystal—seen from above so smooth and bountiful—a flood of the milk of Nature dispensed from the white bosom of the hills! Now, near at hand, what do we find it? A medley of opaque blocks, smeared with grit and rubbish; a vast ruin of avalanches hurled together and consolidated, and of the colour of rock salt.
"'Peste!' I cried. 'We must get to the opposite bank, for all that.
"Mignonne, allons voir si la rose, Qui ce matin avoit desclose….'"
"We clasped hands and set forth on our little traversée, our landmark an odd-shaped needle of spar on the further side. My faith! it was simple. The paveurs of Nature had left the road a trifle rough, that was all. Suddenly we came upon a wide fissure stretched obliquely like the mouth of a sole. Going glibly, we learnt a small lesson of caution therefrom. Six paces, and we should have tumbled in.
"We looked over fearfully. Here, in truth, was real ice at last—green as bottle-glass at the edges, and melting into unfathomable deeps of glowing blue.
"In a moment, with a shriek like that of escaping steam, a windy demon leapt at us from the underneath. It was all of winter in a breath. It seemed to shrivel the skin from our faces—the flesh from our bones. We staggered backwards.
"'Mon ami! mon ami!' cried Fidèle, 'my heart is a stone; my eyes are two blisters of water!'
"We danced as the blood returned unwilling to our veins. It was minutes before we could proceed.
"Afterwards I learned that these hellish eruptions of air betoken a change of temperature. It was coming then shortly in a dense rainfall.