The blast of the postillion’s horn on the dark highway moved Chillon to say:  ‘This is what they call posting, my dear.’

She replied:  ’Tell me, brother:  I do not understand, “Let none these marks efface,” at the commencement, after most “picturesque of Castles”:  —­that is you.’

’They are quoted from the verses of a lord who was a poet, addressed to the castle on Lake Leman.  She will read them to you.’

‘Will she?’

The mention of the lord set Carinthia thinking of the lord whom that beautiful she pitied because she was forced to wound him and he was very sensitive.  Wrapped in Henrietta, she slept through the joltings of the carriage, the grinding of the wheels, the blowing of the horn, the flashes of the late moonlight and the kindling of dawn.

CHAPTER VIII

Of the encounter of two strange young men and their consorting:  In which the male reader is requested to bear in mind what wild creature he was in his youth, while the female should marvel credulously.

The young man who fancied he had robed himself in the plain homespun of a natural philosopher at the age of twenty-three journeyed limping leisurely in the mountain maid Carinthia’s footsteps, thankful to the Fates for having seen her; and reproving the remainder of superstition within him, which would lay him open to smarts of evil fortune if he, encouraged a senseless gratitude for good; seeing that we are simply to take what happens to us.  The little inn of the village on the perch furnished him a night’s lodging and a laugh of satisfaction to hear of a young lady and gentleman, and their guide, who had devoured everything eatable half a day in advance of him, all save the bread and butter, and a few scraps of meat, apologetically spread for his repast by the maid of the inn:  not enough for, a bantam cock, she said, promising eggs for breakfast.  He vowed with an honest heart, that it was more than enough, and he was nourished by sympathy with the appetites of his precursors and the maid’s description of their deeds.  That name, Carinthia, went a good way to fill him.

Farther on he had plenty, but less contentment.  He was compelled to acknowledge that he had expected to meet Carinthia again at the Baths.  Her absence dealt a violent shock to the aerial structure he dwelt in; for though his ardour for the life of the solitudes was unfeigned, as was his calm overlooking of social distinctions, the self-indulgent dreamer became troubled with an alarming sentience, that for him to share the passions of the world of men was to risk the falling lower than most.  Women are a cause of dreams,