Pierre accepted the apology with a manly but respectful reverence, continuing always to ascend with unremitted industry.

Ten gloomy and anxious minutes succeeded.  During this time, the falling snows came faster and in finer flakes, while, occasionally, there were fearful intimations that the winds were about to rise.  At the elevation in which the travellers now found themselves, phenomena, that would ordinarily be of little account, become the arbiters of fate.  The escape of the caloric from the human system, at the height of six or seven thousand feet above the sea, and in the latitude of forty-six, is, under the most favorable circumstances, frequently of itself the source of inconvenience; but here were grave additional reasons to heighten the danger.  The absence of the sun’s rays alone left a sense of chilling cold, and a few hours of night were certain to bring frost, even at midsummer.  Thus it is that storms of trifling import in themselves gain power over the human frame, by its reduced means of resistance, and when to this fact is added the knowledge that the elements are far fiercer in their workings in the upper than in the nether regions of the earth, the motives of Pierre’s concern will be better understood by the reader than they probably wese by himself, though the honest guide had a long and severe experience to supply the place of theory.

Men are rarely loquacious in danger.  The timid recoil into themselves, yielding most of their faculties to a tormenting imagination, that augments the causes of alarm and diminishes the means of security, while the firm of mind rally and condense their powers to the point necessary to exertion.  Such were the effects in the present instance, on those who followed Pierre.  A general and deep silence pervaded the party, each one seeing their situation in the colors most suited to his particular habits and character.  The men, without an exception, were grave and earnest in their efforts to force the mules forward; Adelheid became pale, but she preserved her calmness by the sheer force of character; Christine was trembling and dependent, though cheered by the presence of, and her confidence in, Sigismund; while the attendants of the heiress of Willading covered their heads, and followed their mistress with the blind faith in their superiors that is apt to sustain people of their class in serious emergencies.

Ten minutes sufficed entirely to change the aspect of the view.  The frozen element could not adhere to the iron-like and perpendicular faces of the mountains, but the glens, and ravines, and valleys became as white as the peak of Velan.  Still Pierre continued his silent and upward march, in a way to keep alive a species of trembling hope among those who depended so helplessly upon his intelligence and faith.  They wished to believe that the snow was merely one of those common occurrences that were to be expected on the summits of the Alps at this late season of the