After a few days for repose and preparation, one fine morning at sunrise, behold Milord commencing the ascent, with the proud satisfaction of a lover who sees his rival dancing attendance in the antechamber while he glides unseen up the secret stairway with a key to the boudoir in his pocket.

He journeyed up, and on the first day had passed the region of tempests.  Passing the night in his cloak, he began again his task at the dawn of day.

Nothing dismayed him—­no obstacle discouraged him.  He bounded like a chamois from ridge to ridge, he crawled like a snake and hung like a vine from the sharp aretes—­wounds and lacerations covered his body—­after scorching he froze.  The eagles whirled about his head and flapped their wings in his face.  But on he went.  His lungs, distended by the rarified atmosphere, threatened to burst with an explosion akin to a steamboat’s.  Finally, after superhuman efforts, bleeding, panting, gasping for breath, Milord sank exhausted upon the rocks.

What a labor! but what a triumph! what a struggle! but what a conquest!  The thought of being able, the coming winter, to boast of having carved his name where, until then, God alone had written his.

And Sir Francis! who would not fail to plume himself on the joint favors of Chimborazo, how humiliated he would be to learn that Lord K., more fastidious in his amours, more exalted in his ambition, had not, four thousand fathoms above sea, feared to pluck the rose of Tschamalouri!

I remember that the first night I passed in Rome I heard in my sleep a mysterious voice murmuring at my pillow:  “Rome!  Rome! thou art in Rome!”

Milord, shattered, sore and helpless, also heard a charming voice singing sweetly in his ear:  “Thou art stretched full length upon the summit of Tschamalouri.”

This melody insensibly affected him as the balm of Fier-a-Bras.  He rallied, he arose, and with radiant face, sparkling eyes and bosom swelling with pride, drew a poniard from its sheath and prepared to cut his name upon the rock.  Suddenly he turned pale, his limbs gave way under him, the knife dropped from his grasp and fell blunted upon the rocks.  What had he seen?  What could have happened to so agitate him in these inaccessible regions?

There, upon the tablet of granite where he was about to inscribe the name of his ancestors, he read, unhappy man, distinctly read, these two names distinctly cut in the flint, “William and Lavinia,” with the following inscription, in English, underneath:  “Here, July 25th, 1831, two tender hearts communed.”