“Still, it is a wise precaution, I will admit, not to eat of all hedge fruit because blackberries are sweet.  Some day, after the fiftieth stomach-ache, we shall learn wisdom, my Fidele and I.

“‘Fools rush in where angels fear to tread.’  That, I know, comes into the English gospel.

“Well, I will tell you, I am content to be considered of the first; and my Fidele is assuredly of the second.  Yet did she fear, or I rush in?  On the contrary, I have a little laughing thought that it was the angel inveighed against the dulness of caution when the fool would have hesitated.

“Now, it was before the season of the Alps; and the mountain aubergistes were, for the most part, not arrived at their desolate hill-taverns.  Nor were guides at all in evidence, being yet engaged, the sturdy souls, over their winter occupations.  One, no doubt, we could have procured, had we wished it; but we did not.  We would explore under the aegis of no cicerone but our curiosity.  That was native to us, if the district was strange.

“Following, at first, the instructions of Herr Baedeker, we travelled and climbed, chattering and singing as we went, in the direction of the Montenvert, whence we were to descend upon the Mer de Glace, and enjoy the spectacle of a stupendous glacier.

“‘And that, I am convinced,’ said Fidele, ’is nothing more nor less than one of those many windows that give light to the monsters of the under-earth.’

“‘Little imbecile!  In some places this window is six hundred feet thick.’

“‘So?’ she said.  ’That is because their dim eyes could not endure the full light of the sun.’

“We had brought a tin box of sandwiches with us; and this, with my large pewter flask full of wine, was slung upon my back.  For we had been told the Hotel du Montenvert was yet closed; and, sure enough when we reached it, the building stood black in a pool of snow, its shuttered windows forlorn, and long icicles hung from the eaves.

“The depression induced by this sight was momentary.  We turned from it to the panorama of majestic loveliness that stretched below and around us.  The glacier—­that rolling sea of glass—­descended from the enormous gates of the hills.  Its source was the white furnace of the skies; its substance the crystal refuse of the stars; and from its margins the splintered peaks stood up in a thousand forms of beauty.  Right and left, in the hollows of the mountains, the mist lay like ponds, opal and translucent; and the shafts of the pine trees standing in it looked like the reflections of themselves.

“It made the eyes ache—­this silence of greatness; and it became a relief to shift one’s gaze to the reality of one’s near neighbourhood—­the grass, and the rhododendron bushes, and even the dull walls of the deserted auberge.

“A narrow path dipped over the hill-side and fled into the very jaws of the moraine.  Down the first of this path we raced, hand in hand; but soon, finding the impetus overmastering us, we pulled up with difficulty, and descended the rest of the way circumspectly.