The Pass had the extraordinary individuality of one face as compared
with another. It had not even a family resemblance to the St. Gothard.
The air was sweet with the good smell of newly cut wood and resinous
pines. There were sudden glimpses of icy peaks, cut diamonds in the
sun, seen for a moment, then swallowed up by stealthily creeping white
clouds, or caressed by them with a benediction in passing. Thin
streaks of cascades on precipitous rocks made silver veinings in
ebony. Side valleys opened unexpectedly, and one knew from hearsay
that gold mines were hidden there. Treading the road built by
Napoleon, I was enveloped in the gloom of the wondrous Gondo Schlucht,
to come out into a broad valley,--a green amphitheatre, above which a
company of white, mountain gods sat grouped to watch a cloud-fight.

If I had not been heart-broken by the cruelty of Helen Blantock, I
should have been almost minded to thank her for sending me here. But
then,--I reminded myself hastily when this thought winked at me over
my shoulder,--I was stunned still, by my heavy disappointment. I was
not conscious to the full of my suffering now, but I should wake up to
it by-and-bye, and then it would be awful--as awful as the desolation
left by a recent great avalanche whose appalling traces I had just
seen.

[Illustration: "TREADING THE ROAD BUILT BY NAPOLÉON".]

I refused to be interested in the old Hospice of St. Bernard, or the
newer Hospice, built by order of Napoleon, because neither seemed to
me the real thing. If I could not see the Hospice of St. Bernard on
the Pass of Great St. Bernard, I would not see any other hospices
called by his name. If possible, I would have gone by them with my
eyes shut; but at the new Hospice the yapping of a dozen adorable