Chapter XXVI.
Anon a figure enters, quaintly neat,
All pride and business, bustle and conceit;
With looks unalter'd by these scenes of woe,
With speed that, ent'ring, speaks his haste to go.
He bids the gazing throng around him fly,
And carries fate and physic in his eye.
Crabbe.
There is another receptacle for those who die on the Great St. Bernard,
hard by the convent itself. At the close of the time mentioned in the
last, chapter, and near the approach of night, Sigismund was pacing the
rocks on which this little chapel stands, buried in reflections to which
his own history and the recent events had given birth. The snow that fell
during the late storm had entirely disappeared, and the frozen element was
now visible only on those airy pinnacles that form the higher peaks of the
Alps. Twilight had already settled into the lower valleys, but the whole
of the superior region was glowing with the fairy-like lustre of the last
rays of the sun. The air was chill, for at that hour and season, whatever
might be the state of the weather, the evening invariably brought with it
a positive sensation of cold in the gorge of St.
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