It was different with those who followed. Though long accustomed to gaze
at their native mountains from a distance, this was the first occasion on
which Adelheid and her companion had ever actually penetrated into their
glens, or journeyed on their broken and changing faces. The path of St.
Bernard, therefore, had all the charm of novelty, and their youthful and
ardent minds were soon won from meditating on their own causes of
unhappiness, to admiration of the sublime works of nature. The cultivated
taste of Adelheid, in particular, was quick in detecting those beauties of
a more subtle kind which the less instructed are apt to overlook, and she
found additional pleasure in pointing them out to the ingenuous and
wondering Christine, who received these, her first, lessons in that grand
communion with nature which is pregnant with so much unalloyed delight,
with gratitude and a readiness of comprehension, that amply repaid her
instructress. Sigismund was an attentive and pleased listener to what was
passing, though one who had so often passed the mountains, and who had
seen them familiarly on their warmer and more sunny side, had little to
learn, himself, even from so skilful and alluring a teacher.
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