Its own crushed infinity of crystals, its own richness of tiny
sculpture, fills it, when regarded near at hand, with wonderful
depths of coloured shadow, and, though wintrily transformed, it is
still water, and has watery tones of blue. But, when all is said,
these fields of white and blots of crude black forest are but a
trite and staring substitute for the infinite variety and
pleasantness of the earth's face. Even a boulder, whose front is
too precipitous to have retained the snow, seems, if you come upon
it in your walk, a perfect gem of colour, reminds you almost
painfully of other places, and brings into your head the delights
of more Arcadian days--the path across the meadow, the hazel dell,
the lilies on the stream, and the scents, the colours, and the
whisper of the woods. And scents here are as rare as colours.
Unless you get a gust of kitchen in passing some hotel, you shall
smell nothing all day long but the faint and choking odour of
frost. Sounds, too, are absent: not a bird pipes, not a bough
waves, in the dead, windless atmosphere. If a sleigh goes by, the
sleigh-bells ring, and that is all; you work all winter through to
no other accompaniment but the crunching of your steps upon the
frozen snow.
It is the curse of the Alpine valleys to be each one village from
one end to the other. Go where you please, houses will still be in
sight, before and behind you, and to the right and left.
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