After some complimentary remarks, Lawrence asked if it were possible to see the summit of Mont Blanc from where they stood.
Certainly it was; the guide’s pretty wife could point it out and attempted to do so, but was for a long time unsuccessful, owing to the interference of preconceived notions—each of our travellers having set his heart upon beholding a majestic peak of rugged rock, mingled, perhaps, with ice-blocks and snow.
“Most extraordinary,” exclaimed the puzzled Captain, “I’ve squinted often enough at well-known peaks when on the look-out for landmarks from the sea, an’ never failed to make ’em out. Let me see,” he added, getting behind the woman so as to look straight along her outstretched arm, “no, I can’t see it. My eyes must be giving way.”
“Surely,” said Lawrence, “you don’t mean that little piece of smooth snow rising just behind the crest of yonder mountain like a bit of rounded sugar?”
“Oui, monsieur”—that was precisely what she meant; that was the summit of Mont Blanc.
And so, our three travellers—like many hundreds of travellers who had gone before them, and like many, doubtless, who shall follow—were grievously disappointed with their first view of Mont Blanc! They lived, however to change their minds, to discover that the village of Chamouni lies too close to the toe of the Great White Mountain to permit of his being seen to advantage. One may truly see a small scrap of the veritable top from Chamouni, but one cannot obtain an idea of what it is that he sees. As well might a beetle walk close up to the heel of a man, and attempt from that position to form a correct estimate of his size; as well might one plant himself two inches distant from a large painting and expect to do it justice! No, in order to understand Mont Blanc, to “realise” it, to appreciate it adequately, it requires that we should stand well back, and get up on one of the surrounding heights, and make the discovery that as we rise he rises, and looks vaster and more tremendous the further off we go and the higher up we rise, until, with foot planted on the crest of one of the neighbouring giants, we still look up, as well as down, and learn—with a feeling of deeper reverence, it may be, for the Maker of the “everlasting hills”—that the grand monarch with the hoary head does in reality tower supreme above them all.