‘No! no! It is impossible.’ Such subtleties were ensnaring. They came from the enemy of souls. The fact was that schnapps had quickened the good man’s religiosity, while they had obscured his understanding. It would have been unfeeling, and perhaps unavailing, to have argued the point, or pressed the request further in any way. And so with thanks for having reminded us of the road we must both travel to reach heaven, he was told that his guests would be content to-day with what elements of meat there might be in the eggs, and fat cheese, and soup, and fish, and would dispense with the thing itself in its ordinary Livigno form of dried beef. Who would not have abstained from a few shreds of the hock of a mummied ox for the sake of witnessing the satisfaction this announcement gave the good man? The momentary cloud passed away from his face, and he instantly became again, and, as the afternoon advanced, in a still higher degree than he had been yesterday, the man of one thought—the host, and nothing else. At dinner his ministerings were bliss; at supper they became devotion.
But dinner, though made the most of, was at last over; and supper, the next event, was a long way off. The roadway, and the roofs of the châlets had at last succumbed to the ceaseless snow, and everything was now unbroken white. The question was, therefore, forced upon us of What was to be done? How was the afternoon to be got through? The cold in the house was getting down to the bone, notwithstanding the dinner, and frequent visits to the kitchen fire, for the outer hall door, and all other doors were constantly kept open for the sake of the light, and the kitchen fire was a mere pretence, except when some cooking was going on. The card-players had again returned, notwithstanding the festa, or perhaps because of the festa, for ‘on festas the church before midday, and the tavern after midday’ is a saying here. What, then, can be done? Rather for the sake of saying something than from the hope of hearing any useful suggestion, I put my despair in the form of a question to the good man.
‘The best thing you can do,’ he replied with a readiness and decision which indicated that what he was announcing was the familiar practice of Livigno, the outcome of the experience of life in the place, ‘the best thing you can do is to go to bed till supper time.’
The novelty of the idea precluded an immediate answer. The time, however, required for fully taking it in, was also sufficient for enabling one to see that there was reason in it. Really there was nothing else that could be done; and so half an hour’s more looking out at the door, and walking up and down the hall, overcame the repugnance I had at first felt to the suggestion. Do at Livigno as the Livignese do worked in the same direction. And so at 3 P.M. we went up stairs, lay down upon our beds, drew our coverlets over us, and were soon lost, and continued lost for three hours, to all sense of the incongruity of a day that would have been wretched in the middle of January coming upon us suddenly in the middle of August.
CHAPTER XI.
M. DELLA NEVE—VAL DI DENTRO—BORMIO—VAL DI BRAULIO—SANTA MARIA—THE STELVIO—TRAFOI—THE ORTLER.
Where nature seems to sit alone
Majestic on her craggy throne.—Warton.
August 16.—Last night when we returned to our beds the snow was still falling: but we took it for granted that it could not continue into a third day, and, therefore, ordered breakfast for 4.40 this morning. True to time were we, and so was the breakfast. Nor were we disappointed in our anticipation of the weather. It had arranged itself favourably. Snow must have ceased to fall for some hours, for it was beginning to disappear from the valley bottom; nor was the cloud canopy either low down, or quite unbroken. With the expectation, then, that the day would be equal to our wishes, at 5 A.M. we were off. As to that indispensable part of the ceremony of taking leave—the bill—on so promising a morning I was not sorry, perhaps I was rather pleased, that the good man should find in it a reason for looking back with satisfaction to our visit, and with hope that it might be repeated. In respect of his bill the most attentive of Grison landlords, even one who on fête-days has his thoughts turned towards Paradise, and is desirous of helping others to take the right road to it, is likely to prove only a Grison man, or simply only a man. Francs here are very precious, and the opportunities for making them are very limited: we will, therefore, condone our friend’s inability to withhold himself from turning his opportunity to the best account. As we were leaving the house, good nature, or, perhaps, conscience, prompted him to follow us into the road with a black bottle and two little glasses from the table on the left side of the hall. The morning was cold, and we ought to take something to fortify us against the cold. We declined on the ground that we had just breakfasted. Would we then fill our flasks? We should feel the want of something strong in crossing the mountain. This offer Christian in part accepted; and having again shaken hands, we went straight across the sloppy meadow, and began the ascent of the eastern mountain.
The first stage up to the forest was almost as sloppy as the valley bottom. The path through the forest was better. Above the forest the snow was dry. At 6 o’clock we had reached Trepalle, a scattered hamlet with a church. Nobody was stirring. Immediately beyond Trepalle is a little valley, but as it is very much higher than that of Livigno, it was completely buried in snow. So was every mountain side, and top within our range of vision all round. It was a polar scene. It gave us also a good idea of what these valleys and mountains must be in winter to the eye. What strikes one who comes on such a scene in summer is that the distinctions of colour are gone: the bright green prairie, the sunburnt houses, the dark green forest, the foamy silver stream, the brown green alpine pastures, the gray, or still darker crags, are now all alike. There is a grandeur in this, but a diminution of interest. You soon tire of it; but of the colour-varied scene you never tire. A little further on we came on a large flock of Bergamesque, Roman-nosed sheep, attended by a tall, shaggy-headed shepherd in a sheepskin cloak. Months it seemed must have passed since he last washed his face, or combed his hair, or beard. His flock were bleating piteously, being pinched by the cold and their empty stomachs, for since the ground had been buried, which up here must have been at an early hour yesterday, they could have had nothing to eat. He seemed to have some difficulty in preventing them from straying; his object being to keep them on the side of the hill on which the sun would first melt the snow. Some way beyond the shepherd and his flock, as we were nearing the top of the second range, where the new snow was in places two or three feet deep, we lost our buried path, and were some little time before we recovered it: but this was a matter of no consequence as we could not miss the right direction. Just on the top of this ridge we came on a black lake, with a black shaly margin; all the blacker because everything else was white.
From this point it was all down hill to the valley that would take us to Bormio. As soon as we could command the valley a strange sight opened on our view. The main valley, its ramifications, and the spurs of mountains protruded into it, were, at the distance from which we saw them, and with at the time no sunshine to light them up, of a dark, almost black aspect, for green hardly showed at all in their colouring. This blackness was in the valley bottoms, and about half-way up the mountain sides. At that height the snow began; and it began at an uniform height on all the mountains bounding the valley, and projecting into it. The snow line was as true, as if it had been set out by human hand. The upper part of the mountains, down to about half their height, was with perfect regularity uniformly white; the lower half as uniformly black. The division between the two colours had been made quite fairly, and the line had been drawn quite truly. We soon reached Foscagno, from which the Pass takes its name. Foscagno was just on the line where to-day the snow ceased. Semogo came next, still on the mountain side. Isolaccia was the first town in the valley. Then Pedenosso. After that Torripiano and Premadio. The number and size of the churches might alone have shown us that we were in Italy. By the time we had reached the valley the sun was shining brightly, and down in the bottom, though it is wide and airy, we felt midsummer heat. At Premadio we saw just the tip of the Ortler, peering over the intervening ranges, and looking like a snow châlet perched on the summit of the highest of them. At 11 o’clock, not having had any delays or halts, we reached the hotel of the New Baths of Bormio.