Chapter 45 - Page 2

Napoleon carried it through the backbone of the earth. The eagle, Napoleon's bird, flew like a living armorial crest over the gigantic work of the master. There it was cold and gray; the clouds above us, the clouds below us, and in the middle space steep rocky walls.

"At regular distances houses (relais) are erected for the travellers; in one of these we drank our coffee. The passengers sat on benches and tables around the great fire-place, where the pine logs crackled. More than a thousand names were written on the walls. I amused myself by writing mamma's, yours, Sophie's, and Eva's; now they stand there, and people will fancy that you have been on the Simplon. In the lobby I scratched in that of Mamsell, and added 'Without her workbox.' Otto was thinking about you. We talked in our, what the rest would call 'outlandish speech,' when I all at once exclaimed, 'It is really Eva's birthday!' I remembered it first. In Simplon town we determined to drink her health.

"We set off again. Wherever the glaciers might fall and destroy the road the rocks have been sprung, and formed into great galleries, through which one drives without any danger. One waterfall succeeds another. There is no balustrade along the road, only the dark, deep abyss where the pine-trees raise themselves to an immense height, and yet only look like rafters on the mighty wall of rock. Before we had advanced much further, we came to where trees no longer grew. The great hospice lay in snow and cloud. We came into a valley. What solitude! what desolation! only naked crags! They seemed metallic, and all had a green hue. The utmost variety of mosses grew there; before us towered up an immense glacier, which looked like green bottle-glass ornamented with snow. It was bitterly cold here, and in Simplon the stoves were lighted; the champagne foamed, Eva's health was drunk, and, only think! at that very moment an avalanche was so gallant as to fall. That was a cannonade; a pealing among the mountains! It must have rung in Eva's ears. Ask her about it. I can see how she smiles.

"We now advanced toward Italy, but cold was it, and cold it remained. The landscape became savage; we drove between steep crags. Only fancy, on both sides a block of granite several miles long, and almost as high, and the road not wider than for two carriages to pass, and there you have a picture of it. If one wanted to see the sky, one was obliged to put one's head out of the carriage and look up, and then it was as if one looked up from the bottom of the deepest well, dark and narrow. Every moment I kept thinking, 'Nay, if these two walls should come together!' We with carriage and horses were only like ants on a pebble. We drove through the ribs of the earth! The water roared; the clouds hung like fleeces on the gray, craggy walls. In a valley we saw boys and girls dressed in sheep-skins, who looked as wild as if they had been brought up among beasts.