from valley to valley, and re-echoed among the peaks and crags, and
carried over the mountain tops, even to the blue sky above. The king
and those who stood about him fancied that they heard sweet strains of
music issuing from the mountain caves; the most bewitching sounds arose
among the rocks and gorges; the air was filled with a heavenly perfume
and the songs of birds; and a holy calm settled over mountain and
valley, and fell like a blessing upon the earth. Then the Alps no
longer seemed obstacles in their way. The steep cliffs, which had been
like mighty walls barring their progress, seemed now mere gentle
slopes, rising little by little toward heaven, and affording a pleasant
and easy highway to the fair fields of Italy beyond.

While Charlemagne and his peers gazed in rapt delight upon this vision,
there came down from the mountain crags a beautiful creature such as
none of them had ever before seen. It was a noble stag, white as the
drifted snow, his head crowned with wide-branching antlers, from every
point of which bright sunbeams seemed to flash.

"Behold our leader and our hope!" cried Turpin. "Behold the
sure-footed guide which the Wonder-king has sent to lead us through
narrow ways, and over dangerous steeps, to the smiling valleys and
fields of Italy! Be only strong and trustful and believing, and a safe
way shall open for us, even where there seemed to be no way."

Then the vision faded slowly away from the sight of the peers; and the
mountain walls rose up before them as grim and steep as ever; and the
snow-crowned crags looked down upon them even more angrily than before,
and there seemed no road nor pathway which the foot of man could
follow. But the wondrous white stag, which had filled their minds with
a new-born hope, still stood in plain sight on the lowermost slopes of