The mules were again urged to increase their pace, and images of the
refreshment and repose that were expected from the convent's hospitality,
became general and grateful among the travellers. The day was fast
disappearing from the glens and ravines through which they rode, and all
discourse ceased in the desire to get on. The exceeding purity of the
atmosphere, which, at that great elevation, resembled a medium of thought
rather than of matter, rendered objects defined, just, and near; and none
but the mountaineers and Sigismund, who were used to the deception, (for
in effect truth obtains this character with those who have been accustomed
to the false) and who understood the grandeur of the scale on which nature
has displayed her power among the Alps, knew how to calculate the
distance which still separated them from their goal. More than a league of
painful and stony ascent was to be surmounted, and yet Adelheid and
Christine had both permitted slight exclamations of pleasure to escape
them, when Pierre pointed to the speck of blue sky between the hoary
pinnacles above, and first gave them to understand that it denoted the
position of the convent.
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