XI. L’HOTEL DU MONT BLANC 439

fainting with joy, and want to lie down on the earth and take it in my arms;-at this time, I say, I was irrecoverably sulky because George had not got me butter to my bread at Les Rousses.)

“Tuesday, 1st May.-Walked about Geneva, went to Bautte’s,¹ and drew wood anemones.

“Thursday, 3rd May. CHAMBÉRY.-Up the hill that looks towards Aix, with my father and mother; had a chat with an old man, a proprietor of some land on the hillside, who complained bitterly that the priests and the revenue officers seized everything, and that nothing but black bread was left for the peasant.*

“Friday, 4th May.-Half breakfasted at Chambéry; started about seven for St. Laurent du Pont, thence up to the Chartreuse, and walked down (all of us); which, however, being done in a hurry, I little enjoyed. But a walk after dinner up to a small chapel, placed on a waving group of mounds, covered with the most smooth and soft sward, over whose sunny gold came the dark piny precipices of the Chartreuse hills, gave me infinite pleasure. I had seen also for the third time, by the Chartreuse torrent, the most wonderful of all Alpine birds-a grey, fluttering stealthy creature, about the size of a sparrow, but of colder grey, and more graceful, which haunts the sides of the fiercest torrents. There is something more strange in it than in the seagull-that seems a powerful creature; and the power of the sea, not of a kind so adverse, so hopelessly destructive; but this small creature, silent, tender and light, almost like a moth in its low and irregular flight,-almost touching with its wings the crests of waves that would overthrow a granite wall,

* Complaints of this kind always mean that you are near a luxurious capital or town. In this case, Aix les Bains.

¹ [See above, p. 325.]

[Version 0.04: March 2008]