Here and there a pale star peeped
out, though most of the vault that stretched across the confined horizon
was shut in by dusky clouds. A streak of dull, unnatural light was seen in
the quarter which lay above the meadows of the Rhone, and nearly in a
direction with the peak of Mont Blanc, which, though not visible from this
portion of the Leman, was known to lie behind the ramparts of Savoy, like
a monarch of the hills entrenched in his citadel of rocks and ice.
The change, the lateness of the hour, and the unpleasant reflections left
by the short dialogue with Balthazar, produced a strong and common desire
to see the end of a navigation that was beginning to be irksome. Those
objects which had lately yielded so much and so pure a delight were now
getting to be black and menacing, and the very sublimity of the scale on
which Nature had here thrown together her elements was an additional
source of uncertainty and alarm. Those fairy-like, softly-delineated,
natural arabesques, which had so lately been dwelt upon with rapture were
now converted into dreary crags that seemed to beetle above the helpless
bark, giving unpleasant admonitions of the savage and inhospitable
properties of their iron-bound bases, which were known to prove
destructive to all who were cast against them while the elements were in
disorder.
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