Chapter 26

Anon a figure enters, quaintly neat,
All pride and business, bustle and conceit;
With looks unalter'd by these scenes of woe,
With speed that, ent'ring, speaks his haste to go.
He bids the gazing throng around him fly,
And carries fate and physic in his eye.

Crabbe.

There is another receptacle for those who die on the Great St. Bernard,
hard by the convent itself. At the close of the time mentioned in the
last, chapter, and near the approach of night, Sigismund was pacing the
rocks on which this little chapel stands, buried in reflections to which
his own history and the recent events had given birth. The snow that fell
during the late storm had entirely disappeared, and the frozen element was
now visible only on those airy pinnacles that form the higher peaks of the
Alps. Twilight had already settled into the lower valleys, but the whole
of the superior region was glowing with the fairy-like lustre of the last
rays of the sun. The air was chill, for at that hour and season, whatever
might be the state of the weather, the evening invariably brought with it
a positive sensation of cold in the gorge of St. Bernard, where frosts
prevailed at night, even in midsummer. Still the wind, though strong, was
balmy and soft, blowing athwart the heated plains of Lombardy, and
reaching the mountains charged with the moisture of the Adriatic and the
Mediterranean. As the young man turned in his walk, and faced this
breeze, it came over his spirit with a feeling of hope and home The
greater part of his life had been past in the sunny country whence it
blew, and there were moments when he was lulled into forgetfulness, by the
grateful recollections imparted by its fragrance. But when compelled to
turn northward again, and his eye fell on the misty hoary piles that
distinguished his native land, rude and ragged faces of rock, frozen
glaciers, and deep ravine-like valleys and glens, seemed to him to be
types of his own stormy, unprofitable, and fruitless life, and to foretell
a career which, though it might have touches of grandeur, was doomed to be
barren of all that is genial and consolatory.

All in and about the convent was still. The mountain had an imposing air
of deep solitude amid the wildest natural magnificence. Few travellers had
passed since the storm, and, luckily for those who, under the peculiar
circumstances in which they were placed, so much desired privacy, all of
these had diligently gone their several ways. None were left, therefore,
on the Col, but those who had an interest in the serious investigations
which were about to take place. An officer of justice from Sion, wearing
the livery of the Valais, appeared at a window, a sign that the regular
authorities of the country had taken