In that sublime land, in the heart of a mass of rock riven by a gorge,
--a valley as wide as the Avenue de Neuilly in Paris, but a hundred
fathoms deep and broken into ravines,--flows a torrent coming from
some tremendous height of the Saint-Gothard on the Simplon, which has
formed a pool, I know not how many yards deep or how many feet long
and wide, hemmed in by splintered cliffs of granite on which meadows
find a place, with fir-trees between them, and enormous elms, and
where violets also grow, and strawberries. Here and there stands a
chalet and at the window you may see the rosy face of a yellow-haired
Swiss girl. According to the moods of the sky the water in this tarn
is blue and green, but as a sapphire is blue, as an emerald is green.
Well, nothing in the world can give such an idea of depth, peace,
immensity, heavenly love, and eternal happiness--to the most heedless
traveler, the most hurried courier, the most commonplace tradesman--as
this liquid diamond into which the snow, gathering from the highest
Alps, trickles through a natural channel hidden under the trees and
eaten through the rock, escaping below through a gap without a sound.
The watery sheet overhanging the fall glides so gently that no ripple
is to be seen on the surface which mirrors the chaise as you drive
past. The postboy smacks his whip; you turn past a crag; you cross a
bridge: suddenly there is a terrific uproar of cascades tumbling
together one upon another. The water, taking a mighty leap, is broken
into a hundred falls, dashed to spray on the boulders; it sparkles in
a myriad jets against a mass that has fallen from the heights that
tower over the ravine exactly in the middle of the road that has been
so irresistibly cut by the most formidable of active forces.

If you have formed a clear idea of this landscape, you will see in
those sleeping waters the image of Emilio's love for the Duchess, and