THE VILLAGE IN THE MOUNTAINS;

CONVERSION OF PETER BAYSSIERE;

AND

HISTORY OF A BIBLE.

* * * * *




THE VILLAGE IN THE MOUNTAINS.


M. ----, a merchant, at the head of one of the first commercial houses
in Paris,[1] had occasion to visit the manufactories established in
the mountainous tracts of the Departments of the Loire and the Puy de
Dôme. The road that conducted him back to Lyons traversed a country
rich in natural productions, and glowing with all the charms of
an advanced and promising spring. The nearer view was unusually
diversified; not only by the fantastic forms of mountains, the
uncertain course of small and tributary streams, and the varying
hues of fields of pasture, corn, vines, and vegetables, but by the
combinations and contrasts of nature and of art, and the occupations
of rural and commercial industry. Factories and furnaces were seen
rising amidst barns and sheep-cotes, peasants were digging, and
ploughs gliding amidst forges and foundries; verdant slopes and
graceful clumps of trees were scattered amidst the black and ugly