“Tell your employers, he said,” added Sigismund, “that they may thank the saints, Our Lady, or brother Luther, as best suits their habits, but that they had better forget that such a man as Maso lives.  His acquaintance can bring them neither honor nor advantage.  Tell this especially to the Signor Grimaldi, when you are on your journey to Italy, and we have parted for ever, as on my suggestion.  This was said to me, in the interview I held with the I rave fellow after his liberation from prison.”

“The answer was remarkable for a man of his condition, and the especial message to myself of singular exception.  I observed that his eye was often on me, with peculiar meaning, during the passage of the lake, and to this hour I have not been able to explain the motive!”

“Is the Signore of Genoa?”—­asked the guide:  “or is he, by chance, in any way connected with her authorities?”

“Of that republic and city, and certainly of some little interest with the authorities;” answered the Italian, a slight smile curling his lip, as he glanced a look at his friend.

“It is not necessary to look farther for Maso’s acquaintance with your features,” returned Pierre, laughing; “for of all who live in Italy, there is not a man who has more frequent occasions to know the authorities; but we linger, in this gossip.  Urge the beasts upwards, Etienne—­presto!—­presto!”

The muleteers answered this appeal by one of their long cries, which has a resemblance to the rattling that is the well-known signal of the venomous serpent of this country when he would admonish the traveller to move quickly, and which certainly produces the same startling effect on the nerves of the mule as the signal of the snake is very apt to excite in man.  This interruption caused the dialogue to be dropped, all riding onward, musing in their several fashions on what had just passed.  In a few minutes the party turned the crag in question, and, quitting the valley, or sterile basin, in which they had been journeying for the last half hour, they entered by a narrow gorge into a scene that resembled a crude collection of the materials of which the foundations of the world had been originally formed.  There was no longer any vegetation at all, or, if here and there a blade of grass had put forth under the shelter of some stone, it was so meagre, and of so rare occurrence, as to be unnoticed in that sublime scene of chaotic confusion.  Ferruginous, streaked, naked, and cheerless rocks arose around them, and even that snowy beacon, the glowing summit of Velan, which had so long lain bright and cheering on their path, was now hid entirely from view.  Pierre Dumont soon after pointed out a place on the visible summit of the mountain, where a gorge between the neigh boring peaks admitted a view of the heavens beyond.  This he informed those he guided was the Col, through whose opening the pile of the Alps was to be finally surmounted.  The light that still tranquilly reigned in this part