"As you would be grieved at losing me," said he to the doctor, "I will
endeavor to avail myself of your good advice without leaving the
place. I will set about having a house built to-morrow, and the
atmosphere within it shall be regulated by your instructions."
The doctor understood the sarcastic smile that lurked about Raphael's
mouth, and took his leave without finding another word to say.
The Lake of Bourget lies seven hundred feet above the Mediterranean,
in a great hollow among the jagged peaks of the hills; it sparkles
there, the bluest drop of water in the world. From the summit of the
Cat's Tooth the lake below looks like a stray turquoise. This lovely
sheet of water is about twenty-seven miles round, and in some places
is nearly five hundred feet deep.
Under the cloudless sky, in your boat in the midst of the great
expanse of water, with only the sound of the oars in your ears, only
the vague outline of the hills on the horizon before you; you admire
the glittering snows of the French Maurienne; you pass, now by masses
of granite clad in the velvet of green turf or in low-growing shrubs,
now by pleasant sloping meadows; there is always a wilderness on the
one hand and fertile lands on the other, and both harmonies and
dissonances compose a scene for you where everything is at once small
and vast, and you feel yourself to be a poor onlooker at a great
banquet.
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