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CHAPTER VII. THE BER GONZ.—THE PIC DU MIDI.
I.
We ought to be useful to our fellow-mortals; I have climbed the Bergonz in order to have at least one ascent to tell about.
A stony, zigzag pathway excoriates the green mountain with its whitish track. The view changes with every turn. Above and below us are meadows with girls making hay, and little houses stuck to the declivity like swallows’ nests. Lower down, an immense pit of black rock, to which from all sides hasten streams of silver. The higher up we are, the more the valleys are contracted and fade from sight; the more the gray mountains enlarge and spread themselves in all their hugeness. Suddenly, beneath the burning sun, the perspective becomes confused; we feel the cold and damp touch of some unknown and invisible being. A moment after, the air clears up, and we perceive behind us the white, rounded back of a beautiful cloud fleeing into the distance, and whose shadow glides lightly over the slope. The useful herbage soon disappears; scorched mosses, thousands of rhododendrons clothe the barren escarpments; the road is damaged by the force of the hidden springs; it is encumbered with rolling stones. It turns with every ten paces, in order to conquer the steepness of the slopes. You reach at last a naked ridge, where you dismount from your horse; here begins the top of the mountain. You walk for ten minutes over a carpet of serried heather, and you are upon the highest summit.