A morning as brilliant as ever lit up the glaciers of Mt. Blank rose
over the cloisters. Charles and Henry accompany their father on a
stroll through the mountain. They miss their kind Mentor, who is
on a retreat for some days. Henry, commencing to love solitude, strays
from her father and Charles to gather ferns and wild flowers creeping
from the crevices of the rocks, or rising with exquisite beauty from
a layer of snow. They are emblems of her own innocence and fragrant
as her virtue, growing in the wilderness and shedding their charms
on rocks and snow-peaks, instead of ornamenting gardens of culture
and beauty. Poor Aloysia would be more at home in some arbor of
innocence where angels love to tarry, and where the voice and gaze of
the worldly-minded have never fallen.
Cassier and Charles had slowly climbed to a projecting rock where
nature had made a large table covered with grass. On one side the
ascent was easy, but the other overhung a frightful precipice. They
had entered into an animated conversation; Aloysia, down beneath,
could hear the sharp, quick answers of Charles, but, as such was usual
in the temper of Charles, she did not notice it.
But lo! another moment, and a wild, shrill scream bade her look up;
her father was no longer on the ledge of rock, and Charles flung her
arms towards heaven and fell in a swoon on the edge of the precipice.
Chapter XVI.
A Funeral in the Snow.
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