And what a view it was!  The plain stretching up to the high horizon, where a misty range of pink cirrus-clouds alone marked the line where earth ended and the sky began, was islanded with cities and villages innumerable, basking in the hazy shimmering heat.  Milan, seen through the doctor’s telescope, displayed its Duomo perfect as a microscopic shell, with all its exquisite fretwork, and Napoleon’s arch of triumph surmounted by the four tiny horses, as in a fairy’s dream.  Far off, long silver lines marked the lazy course of Po and Ticino, while little lakes like Varese and the lower end of Maggiore spread themselves out, connecting the mountains with the plain.  Five minutes’ walk from the hotel brought us to a ridge where the precipice fell suddenly and almost sheer over one arm of Lugano Lake.  Sullenly outstretched asleep it lay beneath us, coloured with the tints of fluor-spar, or with the changeful green and azure of a peacock’s breast.  The depth appeared immeasurable.  San Salvadore had receded into insignificance:  the houses and churches and villas of Lugano bordered the lake-shore with an uneven line of whiteness.  And over all there rested a blue mist of twilight and of haze, contrasting with the clearness of the peaks above.  It was sunset when we first came here; and, wave beyond wave, the purple Italian hills tossed their crested summits to the foot of a range of stormy clouds that shrouded the high Alps.  Behind the clouds was sunset, clear and golden; but the mountains had put on their mantle for the night, and the hem of their garment was all we were to see.  And yet—­over the edge of the topmost ridge of cloud, what was that long hard line of black, too solid and immovable for cloud, rising into four sharp needles clear and well defined?  Surely it must be the familiar outline of Monte Rosa itself, the form which every one who loves the Alps knows well by heart, which picture-lovers know from Ruskin’s woodcut in the ‘Modern Painters.’  For a moment only the vision stayed:  then clouds swept over it again, and from the place where the empress of the Alps had been, a pillar of mist shaped like an angel’s wing, purple and tipped with gold, shot up against the pale green sky.  That cloud-world was a pageant in itself, as grand and more gorgeous perhaps than the mountains would have been.  Deep down through the hollows of the Simplon a thunderstorm was driving; and we saw forked flashes once and again, as in a distant world, lighting up the valleys for a moment, and leaving the darkness blacker behind them as the storm blurred out the landscape forty miles away.  Darkness was coming to us too, though our sky was clear and the stars were shining brightly.  At our feet the earth was folding itself to sleep; the plain was wholly lost; little islands of white mist had formed themselves, and settled down upon the lakes and on their marshy estuaries; the birds were hushed; the gentian-cups were filling to the brim with dew.  Night had descended on the mountain and the plain; the show was over.