The Gadfly | Page 8

and I like the shape of those hills." They were standing on
Rousseau's Island, and he pointed to the long, severe outlines of the
Savoy side. "But the town looks so stiff and tidy, somehow--so
Protestant; it has a self-satisfied air. No, I don't like it; it reminds me of
Julia."
Montanelli laughed. "Poor boy, what a misfortune! Well, we are here
for our own amusement, so there is no reason why we should stop.
Suppose we take a sail on the lake to-day, and go up into the mountains
to-morrow morning?"
"But, Padre, you wanted to stay here?"
"My dear boy, I have seen all these places a dozen times. My holiday is
to see your pleasure. Where would you like to go?"
"If it is really the same to you, I should like to follow the river back to
its source."
"The Rhone?"

"No, the Arve; it runs so fast."
"Then we will go to Chamonix."
They spent the afternoon drifting about in a little sailing boat. The
beautiful lake produced far less impression upon Arthur than the gray
and muddy Arve. He had grown up beside the Mediterranean, and was
accustomed to blue ripples; but he had a positive passion for swiftly
moving water, and the hurried rushing of the glacier stream delighted
him beyond measure. "It is so much in earnest," he said.
Early on the following morning they started for Chamonix. Arthur was
in very high spirits while driving through the fertile valley country; but
when they entered upon the winding road near Cluses, and the great,
jagged hills closed in around them, he became serious and silent. From
St. Martin they walked slowly up the valley, stopping to sleep at
wayside chalets or tiny mountain villages, and wandering on again as
their fancy directed. Arthur was peculiarly sensitive to the influence of
scenery, and the first waterfall that they passed threw him into an
ecstacy which was delightful to see; but as they drew nearer to the
snow-peaks he passed out of this rapturous mood into one of dreamy
exaltation that Montanelli had not seen before. There seemed to be a
kind of mystical relationship between him and the mountains. He
would lie for hours motionless in the dark, secret, echoing pine-forests,
looking out between the straight, tall trunks into the sunlit outer world
of flashing peaks and barren cliffs. Montanelli watched him with a kind
of sad envy.
"I wish you could show me what you see, carino," he said one day as he
looked up from his book, and saw Arthur stretched beside him on the
moss in the same attitude as an hour before, gazing out with wide,
dilated eyes into the glittering expanse of blue and white. They had
turned aside from the high-road to sleep at a quiet village near the falls
of the Diosaz, and, the sun being already low in a cloudless sky, had
mounted a point of pine-clad rock to wait for the Alpine glow over the
dome and needles of the Mont Blanc chain. Arthur raised his head with
eyes full of wonder and mystery.
"What I see, Padre? I see a great, white being in a blue void that has no
beginning and no end. I see it waiting, age after age, for the coming of
the Spirit of God. I see it through a glass darkly."
Montanelli sighed.

"I used to see those things once."
"Do you never see them now?"
"Never. I shall not see them any more. They are there, I know; but I
have not the eyes to see them. I see quite other things."
"What do you see?"
"I, carino? I see a blue sky and a snow-mountain --that is all when I
look up into the heights. But down there it is different."
He pointed to the valley below them. Arthur knelt down and bent over
the sheer edge of the precipice. The great pine trees, dusky in the
gathering shades of evening, stood like sentinels along the narrow
banks confining the river. Presently the sun, red as a glowing coal,
dipped behind a jagged mountain peak, and all the life and light
deserted the face of nature. Straightway there came upon the valley
something dark and threatening --sullen, terrible, full of spectral
weapons. The perpendicular cliffs of the barren western mountains
seemed like the teeth of a monster lurking to snatch a victim and drag
him down into the maw of the deep valley, black with its moaning
forests. The pine trees were rows of knife-blades whispering: "Fall
upon us!" and in the gathering darkness the torrent roared and howled,
beating against its rocky prison walls with the frenzy of an everlasting
despair.
"Padre!" Arthur rose, shuddering, and drew back from the precipice. "It
is like hell."
"No, my