“And you have the heart to sent me back to Paris without having spoken with her?”
“What I have said is for your good, and you know whether I mean you well or not.”
“It is agreed, then, that you will take charge of my interests; that you will plead my cause?”
“It is understood that I will sound the premises, that I will prepare the way—”
“And that you will send me tidings shortly, and that these tidings will be good. I shall await them here, at the Hotel Steinbock.”
“As you please; but, for the love of Heaven, let me sleep!”
M. Camille Langis pressed his two arms and said, with much emotion: “I place myself in your hands; take care how you answer for my life!”
“O youth!” murmured M. Moriaz, actually thrusting Camille from the room. “One might search in vain for a more beautiful invention.”
Ten hours later, a post-chaise bore in the direction of Engadine Mlle. Antoinette Moriaz, her father, her demoiselle de compagnie, and her femme de chambre. They breakfasted tolerably well in a village situated in the lower portion of a notch, called Tiefenkasten, which means, literally, deep chest, and certainly a deeper never has been seen. After breakfast they pursued their way farther, and towards four o’clock in the afternoon they reached the entrance of the savage defile of Bergunerstein, which deserves to be compared with that of Via Mala. The road lies between a wall of rocks and a precipice of nearly two hundred metres, at the bottom of which rush the swift waters of the Albula. This wild scenery deeply moved Mlle. Moriaz; she never had seen anything like it at Cormeilles or anywhere about Paris. She alighted, and, moving towards the parapet, leaned over it, contemplating at her ease the depths below, which the foaming torrent beneath filled with its roars.
Her father speedily joined her.