A pretty
Savoyard girl, I should think about fifteen years old, came up to me.
"Madame admires the mountains," she said.
I assented.
"Yes," she added, "strangers always admire our mountains."
"And don't you admire them?" said I, looking, I suppose, rather amused
into her bright eyes.
"No," she said, laughing. "Strangers come from hundreds of miles to
see them all the time; but we peasants don't care for them, no more
than the dust of the road."
I could but half believe the bright little puss when she said so; but
there was a lumpish, soggy fellow accompanying her, whose nature
appeared to be sufficiently unleavened to make almost any thing
credible in the line of stupidity. In fact, it is one of the greatest
drawbacks to the pleasure with which one travels through this
beautiful country, to see what kind of human beings inhabit it. Here
in the Alps, heaven above and earth beneath, tree, rock, water, light
and shadow, every form, and agent, and power of nature, seem to be
exerting themselves to produce a constant and changing poem and
romance; every thing is grand, noble, free, and yet beautiful: in all
these regions there is nothing so repulsive as a human dwelling.
Pages:
269
270
271
272
273
274
275
276
277
278
279
280
281
282
283
284
285
286
287
288
289
290
291
292
293