“Arriving at Veytaux by the path which crosses the vineyards by a murmuring brook, we found a still more beautiful view. Between the two mountains that shelter the village, there rise at some distance two peaks of unequal shape; and these two are the only ones at this season as yet covered with snow. Their alabaster summits, standing out against a faint mist, shone as if one of the Olympians, celebrated in the song of the divine Homer, had touched them with his immortal foot.
“But at sunset especially did we most enjoy the magnificent sight of the lake, which could be seen from my windows in its whole length. An orange light then stained the west at the place where the mountains of Savoy dip down into the lake. These mountains stood out boldly against the blazing horizon. At the right a purple zone crowned the hills and grew feebler toward Vevey; in the midst of the lake flamed a marvellous fire, while the waters were somber under Villeneuve, of a pallid blue under Veytaux, and of a pearly gray color, cut by red bands, along the shores of Savoy.
“One evening this spectacle, though still fascinating, had something saddening about it. The mountains of Savoy were enveloped in a thick veil, surmounted by a canopy of pale azure illuminated by the dying sun. The veil grew larger toward Lausanne and formed a sort of chain of vapors, heaped up and climbing into space. A few lines of the color of blood streaked these gloomy masses. Such might have been the earth after the deluges of primitive times, when a ray of light began to smile across the darkness on a desolate universe.
“In the last week of December the snow, which had grown deep on the mountains, kept us from all walking. Nothing is so sad as a lake when it is surrounded by a winter landscape. The dazzling brilliancy of the snow spreads across the water, which was formerly the rival of the sapphire, a leaden hue more funereal than that of stagnant pools of the marsh. Here and there the steeper crags pierce through the pall with which they are covered and stand up like lugubrious sentinels. A miserly light comes down from the ashen-hued sky. One hears nothing but the hoarse cries of the gulls and the reiterated cawing of the crows as they fly in flocks along the shores of the lake and seem to delight in this spectacle of death.
“I have lived too long among the frozen fens of Ingria to love these melancholy pomps of winter, though they charm the imagination of some persons. Eléonora, though born on the foggy banks of the Rhine, was like me in loving the glory of the Day. She would have agreed with Gœthe, who, as he lay dying, cried: ‘More light! More light!’”
[CHAPTER X]
THE ALPS AND THE JURA
