This solemn harmony of event and situation regulated our feelings, and gave as it were fitting costume to our last act.  Majestic gloom and tragic pomp attended the decease of wretched humanity.  The funeral procession of monarchs of old, was transcended by our splendid shews.  Near the sources of the Arveiron we performed the rites for, four only excepted, the last of the species.  Adrian and I, leaving Clara and Evelyn wrapt in peaceful unobserving slumber, carried the body to this desolate spot, and placed it in those caves of ice beneath the glacier, which rive and split with the slightest sound, and bring destruction on those within the clefts—­no bird or beast of prey could here profane the frozen form.  So, with hushed steps and in silence, we placed the dead on a bier of ice, and then, departing, stood on the rocky platform beside the river springs.  All hushed as we had been, the very striking of the air with our persons had sufficed to disturb the repose of this thawless region; and we had hardly left the cavern, before vast blocks of ice, detaching themselves from the roof, fell, and covered the human image we had deposited within.  We had chosen a fair moonlight night, but our journey thither had been long, and the crescent sank behind the western heights by the time we had accomplished our purpose.  The snowy mountains and blue glaciers shone in their own light.  The rugged and abrupt ravine, which formed one side of Mont Anvert, was opposite to us, the glacier at our side; at our feet Arveiron, white and foaming, dashed over the pointed rocks that jutted into it, and, with whirring spray and ceaseless roar, disturbed the stilly night.  Yellow lightnings played around the vast dome of Mont Blanc, silent as the snow-clad rock they illuminated; all was bare, wild, and sublime, while the singing of the pines in melodious murmurings added a gentle interest to the rough magnificence.  Now the riving and fall of icy rocks clave the air; now the thunder of the avalanche burst on our ears.  In countries whose features are of less magnitude, nature betrays her living powers in the foliage of the trees, in the growth of herbage, in the soft purling of meandering streams; here, endowed with giant attributes, the torrent, the thunder-storm, and the flow of massive waters, display her activity.  Such the church-yard, such the requiem, such the eternal congregation, that waited on our companion’s funeral!

Nor was it the human form alone which we had placed in this eternal sepulchre, whose obsequies we now celebrated.  With this last victim Plague vanished from the earth.  Death had never wanted weapons wherewith to destroy life, and we, few and weak as we had become, were still exposed to every other shaft with which his full quiver teemed.  But pestilence was absent from among them.  For seven years it had had full sway upon earth; she had trod every nook of our spacious globe; she had mingled with the atmosphere, which as a cloak enwraps all our fellow-creatures—­the inhabitants of native Europe—­the luxurious Asiatic—­the swarthy African and free American had been vanquished and destroyed by her.  Her barbarous tyranny came to its close here in the rocky vale of Chamounix.