The rain was just over.  It had been a cold rain, and the snow had crept downward on the heights, and had even powdered the pines of the Cubly.  The clouds were sweeping low in the west.  Towards Geneva the lake was mere wide and featureless space—­a cold and misty water, melting into the fringes of the rain-clouds.  But to the east, above the Rhone valley, the sky was lifting; and as Julie sat down upon a midway seat and turned herself eastward, she was met by the full and unveiled glory of the higher Alps—­the Rochers de Naye, the Velan, the Dent du Midi.  On the jagged peaks of the latter a bright shaft of sun was playing, and the great white or rock-ribbed mass raised itself above the mists of the lower world, once more unstained and triumphant.

But the cold bise was still blowing, and Julie, shivering, drew her wrap closer round her.  Her heart pined for Como and the south; perhaps for the little Duchess, who spoiled and petted her in the common, womanish ways.

The spring—­a second spring—­was all about her; but in this chilly northern form it spoke to her with none of the ravishment of Italy.  In the steep fields above her the narcissuses were bent and bowed with rain; the red-browns of the walnuts glistened in the wet gleams of sun; the fading apple-blossom beside her wore a melancholy beauty; only in the rich, pushing grass, with its wealth of flowers and its branching cow-parsley, was there the stubborn life and prophecy of summer.

Suddenly Julie caught up the book that lay beside her and opened it with a hasty hand.  It was one of that set of Saint-Simon which had belonged to her mother, and had already played a part in her own destiny.

She turned to the famous “character” of the Dauphin, of that model prince, in whose death Saint-Simon, and Fenelon, and France herself, saw the eclipse of all great hopes.

“A prince, affable, gentle, humane, patient, modest, full of compunctions, and, as much as his position allowed—­sometimes beyond it—­humble, and severe towards himself.”

Was it not to the life? “Affable, doux, humain—­patient, modeste—­humble et austere pour soi”—­beyond what was expected, beyond, almost, what was becoming?

She read on to the mention of the Dauphine, terrified, in her human weakness, of so perfect a husband, and trying to beguile or tempt him from the heights; to the picture of Louis Quatorze, the grandfather, shamed in his worldly old age by the presence beside him of this saintly and high-minded youth; of the Court, looking forward with dismay to the time when it should find itself under the rule of a man who despised and condemned both its follies and its passions, until she reached that final rapture, where, in a mingled anguish and adoration, Saint-Simon bids eternal farewell to a character and a heart of which France was not worthy.

The lines passed before her, and she was conscious, guiltily conscious, of reading them with a double mind.