A few miles up the valley, Erwald called our attention to the entrance of the cavern of Balme.  It is a natural gallery in the rock and well worth a visit.  The valley now becomes more spacious; while its boundaries increase in grandeur.  The meadows, adorned with groves of beech-trees, rise in gentle swells from the verge of the Arve, and spread their green carpet, dotted with cottages and watered by innumerable streams, to the base of the neighboring heights.  At one of these cottages we rested for the night.  I never dreamed of a fairer scene; it was too beautiful for sleep; the murmurings of the Arve were the only sounds that broke upon the ear, while all around tremendous precipices rose to heaven, shutting out from us the cares and tumults of the busy world.  To pay for my enthusiasm I arose with a headache and a feeling of weariness that sensibly diminished the enjoyment of the morning.

Leaving this enchanted spot, we passed the waterfall D’Orli, and a few miles beyond we paused to admire the cataract of Arpenas.  Its height is estimated at eight hundred feet.  The water rushes with considerable volume over a tremendous precipice of dark and fantastic rocks.  At first it divides into separate streams that in their fall resemble descending rockets, till at length, caught by the rocks beneath, they meet and mingle in one mass of foam.

At the cataract we had an instance of that deception which is produced to the eye by the magnitude of the objects which compose the scenery of these Alpine regions.  Viewed from the road the fall did not appear by any means so considerable as it measurement determines; while at its foot there was a little green hillock to the summit of which it seemed a few steps would reach.  To this hillock we determined to proceed.  But what was our astonishment when we found a mountain before us, and when we reached its top, the cataract loomed up in inconceivable vastness, rushing into a wild abyss beneath, that deafened us with its uproar and bedewed us with its spray.

We now approached the village of Maglan, where Vesta lived.  As we drew near, I observed Erwald’s face flush and grow pale; that dear sister he had not seen since his father drove her from the house because of her apostasy.  Now she was ill and had sent for him.  How great the change!  His mother was a Christian and his father did not go to mass.  As we entered the village I was struck with the pleasing, intelligent faces of all that we met.  Leaving us at the door of the only lodging-house in the place, Erwald went to visit his sister; but not before I had asked that he would return for me provided that he found her comfortable.  In an hour or more, he returned, his countenance sad, but still peaceful.  Vesta was sicker than he had dreamed of; it was feared that she would not recover.

“Do you think it will not hurt her, for me to see her?” I asked.

“Oh, no, she said that she would like to see you.”