crossed the seas to land in the New World which, in its turn, felt the
throb, and also came to this wilderness to hail the Virgin.

"And the circumstances attending these pilgrimages were such as might
have daunted the determination of the most persevering. To reach the
little inn, perched on high near the church, the lazy rumbling of slow
trains must be endured for hours, and constant changes at stations; days
must be spent in the diligence, and nights in breeding-places of fleas
at country inns; and after flaying your back on the carding-combs of
impossible beds, you must rise at daybreak to start on a giddy climb, on
foot or riding a mule, up zig-zag bridle-paths above precipices; and at
last, when you are there, there are no fir trees, no beeches, no
pastures, no torrents; nothing--nothing but total solitude, and silence
unbroken even by the cry of a bird, for at that height no bird is to be
found.

"What a scene!" thought Durtal, calling up the memories of a journey he
had made with the Abbé Gévresin and his housekeeper, since leaving La
Trappe. He remembered the horrors of a spot he had passed between Saint
Georges de Commiers and La Mure, and his alarm in the carriage as the
train slowly travelled across the abyss. Beneath was darkness increasing
in spirals down to the vasty deeps; above, as far as the eye could
reach, piles of mountains invaded the sky.

The train toiled up, snorting and turning round and round like a top;
then, going into a tunnel, was swallowed by the earth; it seemed to be
pushing the light of day away in front, till it suddenly came out into a
clearing full of sunshine; presently, as if it were retracing its road,
it rushed into another burrow, and emerged with the strident yell of a
steam whistle and deafening clatter of wheels, to fly up the winding