Both women meant kindly by us:  the pleasant fir woods and the fresh air seemed to whisper to us to stay.  So we gave up the plan which we had resolutely made in the night of leaving that very morning, and by so doing found Bad Scharst not only endurable, but really, in a very rough and ready way, enjoyable.  The remembrance of the wild, riotous night even became enveloped with a certain interest when we recollected that this grim attempt at pleasure was in sober reality one of those Tyrolese peasant balls which are represented in such fair and attractive colors on the stage, in pictures or in novels.  It was well to be undeceived, and to see the deep shadows as well as the bright side of Tyrolese life.

And what matter if for one night we had lost our sleep, whilst we breathed exhilarating ozone and drank water which, to quote Joergel, was truly an elixir of life?  For all our temporary and trifling inconveniences we found rich compensation when after an easy ascent of two hours we reached the topmost platform of the mountain, the Kronplatz.  To the north, reaching from east to west, a long, unbroken chain of glaciers, from the Furtschlaeg to the Gross Venediger Spitze with its untrodden snows.  Below us, at some four thousand feet, the broad, rich Pusterthal, with its comfortable villages and its pastoral tributary valleys.  To the south, the stern limestone peaks of the dolomite region; the Vedretta Marmolata, with its breastplate of ice, king of these barbaric giants, the splintered pinnacles of the Drei Zinnen, the pyramidal Antalao, and many another jagged, appalling mountain, stern as the bewildering doctrines of election and reprobation, whilst the pure glistening snow, green meadows and pleasant woods opposite seemed to breathe forth the gentle, winning truths of the glad tidings of peace.

It was delicious to lie on the short turf in an ethereal region with a perception of the burden and heat of the day in the valley below; yet the fresh breeze of the mountain drove us with a sense of hunger back to the baths.

Having spoken of the scenery, let us now speak of the guests.  There were not many.  Frau T——­, ourselves and a young woman, a sewing-machinist, occupied the available chambers of the chalet.  The rest were used as receptacles for hay and milk:  the ground floor contained the stube, the kitchen, the pigstye, or rather the room set apart for the pig, and the cow-house.  Several poor guests, men and woman, hovered about the door of the barn.  They slept in the various lofts, divided into rooms, and cooked for themselves in a common kitchen adjoining the bath-rooms.  These were two long wooden sheds, in which rows of large tubs were placed.  The patients bathed twice a day, being covered over with boards and a horse-rug, but the head was left free.  There was no doctor:  each could doctor himself by lying in the hot water and drinking more or fewer glasses of the iron water daily.  It poured from a spout into a wooden trough between the chalet and the barn; and this explained old Nanni’s mutterings after our arrival.