Saturday, July 9. Rose in a blaze of glory. Rode five mortal hours in
a _char-à-banc_, sweltering under a burning sun. But in less than
ten minutes after we mounted the mules and struck into the gorge, the
ladies muffled themselves in thick shawls. We seemed to have passed,
almost in a moment, from the tropics into the frigid zone. A fur cloak
was suggested to me, but as it happened I was adequately calorified
without. Chancing to be the last in the file, my mule suddenly stopped
to eat.
"_Allez_, _allez_!" said I, twitching the bridle.
"I _won't_!" said he, as plainly as ears and legs could speak.
"_Allez_!" thundered I, jumping off and bestowing a kick upon his
ribs which made me suffer if it did not him.
"I _won't_!" said he, stuffily.
"Won't you?" said I, pursuing the same line of inductive argument,
with rhetorical flourishes of the bridle.
"Never!" he replied again, most mulishly.
"Then if words and kicks won't do," said I, "let us see what virtue
there is in stones;" and suiting the action to the word, I showered
him with fragments of granite, as from a catapult. At every concussion
he jumped and kicked, but kept his nose in the same relative position.
I redoubled the logical admonition; he jumped the more perceptibly;
finally, after an unusually affecting appeal from a piece of granite,
he fairly budged, and I seized the bridle to mount.
"Not at all," said he, wheeling round to his first position, like a
true proslavery demagogue.
"Ah," said I; and went over the same line of argument in a more solid
and convincing manner. At length the salutary impression seemed
permanently fastened on his mind; he fairly gave in; and I rode on in
triumph to overtake the party--having no need of a fur coat.
Horeb, Sinai, and Hor! What a wilderness! what a sudden change!
Nothing but savage, awful precipices of naked granite, snowy fields,
and verdureless wastes! In every other place in the Alps, we have
looked upon the snow in the remote distance, to be dazzled with its
sheeny effulgence--ourselves, meanwhile, in the region of verdure and
warmth. Here we march through a horrid desert--not a leaf, not a blade
of grass--over the deep drifts of snow; and we find our admiration
turns to horror. And this is the road that Hannibal trod, and
Charlemagne, and Napoleon! They were fit conquerors of Rome, who could
vanquish the sterner despotism of eternal winter.
After an hour's perilous climbing, we reached, at last, the
_hospice_, and in five minutes were sitting at the supper table,
by a good blazing fire, with a lively company, chatting with a
gentlemanly abbé, discussing figs and fun, cracking filberts and
jokes, and regaling ourselves genially. But ever and anon drawing,
with a half shiver, a little closer to the roaring fagots in the
chimney, I thought to myself, "And this is our midsummer nights'
dream"!