headlong, exalted satisfaction with the world of men and the scenery
of mountains illumined his clean-cut, very red face, his short,
silver-white whiskers, his innocently eager and triumphant eyes. In
passing he cast a glance of kindly curiosity and a friendly gleam of
big, sound, shiny teeth toward the man and the boy sitting like dusty
tramps by the roadside, with a modest knapsack lying at their feet. His
white calves twinkled sturdily, the uncouth Swiss guide with a surly
mouth stalked like an unwilling bear at his elbow; a small train
of three mules followed in single file the lead of this inspiring
enthusiast. Two ladies rode past, one behind the other, but from the way
they sat I saw only their calm, uniform backs, and the long ends of blue
veils hanging behind far down over their identical hat-brims. His two
daughters, surely. An industrious luggage-mule, with unstarched ears and
guarded by a slouching, sallow driver, brought up the rear. My tutor,
after pausing for a look and a faint smile, resumed his earnest
argument.

I tell you it was a memorable year! One does not meet such an Englishman
twice in a lifetime. Was he in the mystic ordering of common events the
ambassador of my future, sent out to turn the scale at a critical moment
on the top of an Alpine pass, with the peaks of the Bernese Oberland for
mute and solemn witnesses? His glance, his smile, the unextinguishable
and comic ardour of his striving-forward appearance, helped me to
pull myself together. It must be stated that on that day and in the
exhilarating atmosphere of that elevated spot I had been feeling utterly
crushed. It was the year in which I had first spoken aloud of my desire
to go to sea. At first like those sounds that, ranging outside the
scale to which men's ears are attuned, remain inaudible to our sense of
hearing, this declaration passed unperceived. It was as if it had not
been. Later on, by trying various tones, I managed to arouse here