The Argosy — page 124: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

En Voyage. 10g the water, the picturesque Haute Combe lifts its towers above the trees that cluster round. What a home for romance! The lake is gone, and meadows whose dewy grass takes a golden sheen in the sunlight lie between us and the hills. ‘These are draw- ing nearer ; so near we fancy our outstretched hands might reach them. Stern ramparts of stone they stand, unveiled and unsoftened by blade or leaf. ‘Then they change, and put on a kindlier aspect, even as they seem to grow higher and steeper. ‘Trees spring forth from their crevices, velvet moss and silver lichen tapestry their jutting spurs, tiny cottages nestle in their hollows ; and on the broad ledges, steeped in sunlight, miniature orchards and gardens are blooming. Oh, Savoy the beautiful! we seem to understand something of that charm by which you hold fast the hearts of your children, high and low. Was it on such a morning that the royal soldier said good-bye, on your frontier, to his Savoy guard? No marvel that he wept, though on his way to a throne. And still, with every minute, the scene grows more majestically beautiful. The rock walls tower higher and higher. Little mountain streams fall down them, in long silver lines, their course fringed by dazzling icicles. Above them, stoop dark pines. And now, once more, the hills divide. See, through their parting, those iron-grey peaks fretted with glistening snow. ‘That is our first sight of the Alps. But farewell to beauty, sweetness and light; we are at Modena, and the ordeal of the custom-house awaits us. We stand in the unlovely judgment hall, near our luggage, impatiently awaiting the arrival of the inquisitors. Will they never come? A sore conscience in Mabel’s case adds its sting to the usual anxiety. She has in her trunk several packets of tea, intended to cheer the hearts of many exiled friends. ‘‘I warned you not to take them,” observes Aunt Caroline. ‘ You will have to pay six times their real value, when they are discovered.” But, as it happens, this guilty box is passed, with a short glance, by the officials, while they burrow pitilessly into Aunt Caroline’s exquisitely packed layers of wearing apparel, on the insulting pretext of finding there hidden cognac and cigars. All that they do discover are dyed feathers which they maintain to be brand new and as such taxable. ) As time is on the wing, and our appetites whetted by six hours’ fasting, we retire to refresh ourselves, and leave poor Aunt Caroline to argue the point out. It ends in her missing the first four courses of the table d’hote dinner, and only securing the last two by paying duty on these offending plumes. The dinner is so excellent, we hope that even Wenham will be satisfied by it. But a six-course dinner does not soothe the sense of wrong, physical and moral, left by the absence of her usual eleven cConniclooolkks (CO)