"Perhaps I fear to much the effect upon my own soul; but these grand temple-gates are always open, and from their entrance we seem to catch glimpses of the celestial city beyond, inspiring only good and noble thoughts, with an anxious, earnest endeavor to reach higher resting-places."
"And you fear this would be less in the noise and din of the city."
"Not quite that, for the heart that loves Jesus can live and work for him anywhere; but with a free choice I prefer this."
I felt that she was right, it was the work God had given her to do, and she was willing to do it; while the question returned to me with tenfold force, Are you as willing to labor in the field that He has given to you? The man with a vineyard places his laborers as he would have them, giving each one according to his capacity, be it more or less. Our Father has a vineyard; it is the world, and his children are the laborers. "Go work in my vineyard," is the command. The choice is His who placed us there; to work is ours.
"Teaching them to observe all things whatsoever I have commanded you; and lo! I am with you alway, even unto the end of the world."
The next day I left Lausanne, the good pastor and his wife joining me for a few miles on my way, and then we parted--to meet, teacher and taught, in the city of our God.
The Guide Of Montanvert.
We were passing the summer at the Pays de Vaud; thence making excursions, as suited our inclination, to different portions of the country, always finding something new and striking--something out of which we could draw profitable lessons for the future.
On one of these occasions we made the ascent of Montanvert, and visited the Mer de Glace. Montanvert rises abruptly from the vale of Chamouni, and may not improperly be considered a portion of the base of Mont Blanc. It is beautifully wooded to its summit, whence its name of the Green Mountain.
As we were standing in the court of the inn discussing the merits of a guide, and anxious to find a trusty and intelligent person from whom we could learn all that was to be learned, as well as feel secure in his choice of the best paths, a boy and girl came up the hill, and speaking hurriedly to the landlord, advanced confidently to the place where we stood. Lifting his cap, while a shower of light soft curls fell over his coarse blouse, he asked if we were in search of a guide, and if we would take him. His manner was so respectful, and his face and appearance so youthful, we were attracted, and still did not know how to reply to him.
"I was thinking of Franz," said the innkeeper; "you need not fear his youth; he was born here, and his father has always been considered one of the best guides in the country; Franz knows every path."
"Let his father come with him," I suggested. I thought I caught a tear in the boy's eye, and his lips trembled.
"Father is old, and besides he is very ill to-day; if you will allow me I will serve you faithfully."
There was something so frank and truthful, and his words were so well chosen and showed such cultivation, that even had I feared that he was unequal to the task I should have taken him.
At this moment his sister came out of the inn, the good woman following her with a bottle of wine.
"This is for your father, Annette; I hope he will be better to-morrow."
"I am going," I heard Franz whisper; and taking the wine-bottle, he left Annette to carry the smaller packages, and turned to us as if ready to set off.
"You are not to take Annette, are you?" I asked.
"We live halfway up the mountain, and shall pass near the house. We shall not need our poles till we reach that point."
We did not over-exert ourselves at the outset, casting our eyes over the green valley, and then up the snowy mountains, sometimes exchanging a word with Franz, but oftener listening, as he talked in a low voice to Annette, of what she was to do during the day.
"And if he dies, Franz!"
"God grant that he may not."
We had now reached the little cottage, and, laying down her packages, Annette ran to a little shed and brought each of us a long pole furnished with a spike at the end, for which we found abundant use before we returned; she then brought a draught of clear, cold water, gushing out of a rock near by, and, bidding us "God speed," entered the hut.
Franz was with us, but he had just stopped for a word with his father, and there was a moisture in his eye that came very near calling the tears to our own. We did not question him then, but going on, we paused occasionally to observe the ruin which had been wrought by many avalanches, while our ears mistook the sound of others for thunder. Trees uprooted, withered branches and blasted trunks were scattered in every direction, and sometimes a large space was completely cleared by one of these tremendous agents of destruction.
"You have seen the village of Chamouni," said Franz; "it is said to have been built by a few peasants who escaped an avalanche that occurred on the opposite side of the Arve."
The higher we ascended the more steep and difficult it became, and more than once did Franz have to turn and teach us how to use our poles, resting the weight of the body upon them, but still inclining the figure to the face of the mountain instead of the valley. Higher up we came to shoots or rivers of frozen snow; the inclination of the ice being extremely steep and the surface smooth, Franz crossed first, making marks with his pole for our feet. He then directed us to look neither above nor below us, but only to our feet, for should we fall nothing could save us from sliding down the ice and being dashed against the rocks or the stumps of trees beneath. Passing the first in safety, we found the next less formidable, while the danger was diminished in proportion to the experience we acquired.
Once over, Franz told us how his father was accustomed to descend the ice shoot; planting his heels firmly in the snow and placing his pole under his right arm and leaning the entire weight of his body upon it he came down with the swiftness of an arrow, his body almost in a sitting posture, his heels and the spiked end of his pole alone touching the ice and deeply indenting it.
"It happened," said Franz, "that my father was showing a small company of travellers to the summit, when a sudden fancy seized one of them to make the descent in that way. My father expostulated, and told him that it required practice and skill, that but few of the guides would undertake it. He would not be deterred, feeling, as he said, sure that he could do anything performed by another. Seeing that he was determined, my father helped him to adjust his pole, and then shut his eyes."
"And what then?" I asked, as Franz stopped and looked in the direction of the Mer de Glace.
"There was no help for him," said Franz; "he was buried at the foot of the mountain."
Having reached the summit, the scene that burst upon us was sublime in the highest degree; immediately beneath was the Mer de Glace, a broad river of ice running nearly forty miles up into the Alps; to the north the green valley of Chamouni, to the south the gigantic barriers that separate Savoy from Piedmont, and around us inaccessible peaks and mountains of eternal snow, finely contrasting with the deep blue of the heavens; while the roar of cataracts and the thunder of avalanches were the only sounds that broke upon the profound stillness of the terrible solitude.
On the summit of the mountain we found an inn or hospice. We entered and warmed ourselves, neither did we refuse the black bread and glass of sour wine that were presently brought to us. As we sat by the fire a small table was brought near us, and on it lay the album in which we were expected to enter our names. Many notable autographs we found here, and despite the gladness we felt in adding ours to the number, there was still a sad, desolate thought: those most distinguished had all passed away. The mountains remained, their glory undiminished; but the human beings climbing their heights, and exulting in the grandeur of heaven and earth, had vanished like the mist wreath. Years would pass and other feet would cross the slippery fields, other eyes look out upon the work of God's hands, other names be traced, and we, like the throng before us, be gone--no longer to look upon the created, but the Creator.
As soon as we were sufficiently rested, Franz summoned us to the Sea of Ice, and we began to descend the steep and rugged face of the mountain. As we approached the surface of the glacier, these inequalities rose into considerable elevations, intermingled with half-formed pyramids, bending walls and shapeless masses of ice; with blocks of granite and frightful chasms at once savage and fantastic.
It puzzled me to know why it should have been called a sea, a rough and stony one at that; but to me it looked like a river, walled in by two enormous mountains, rising to the height of ten thousand feet, and forming a ravine a mile and a half wide, that pursues a straight course for several miles and divides at the upper end into two glens, like deep gashes, that run up to the highest elevation of the Alps, terminating at the lower extremity in an icy precipice of two thousand feet, whose base is in a still deeper valley. It was as if there had been innumerable torrents dashing down the precipice into the valley--arrested by a mighty hurricane as they hurried along, and wrought into the wildest forms by the fury of the tempest, and then suddenly congealed, leaving a sea or river of ice, framed in with lofty peaks and snowy summits, cataracts and avalanches, clouds and storms, a wonderful combination of the grand, the terrible, and the sublime.
Franz understood his business of guide too well to let me loiter as I wished. "These fissures are the chief danger," he said; and, holding out his small hand, he grasped mine with the tenacity of one not accustomed to let anything slip through his fingers. A girdle of imperfectly frozen snow borders this sea; and Franz never planted his feet till he had first ascertained the nature of the surface with his pole. Some of these fissures are of an amazing depth, and, taking out my watch, I tried to fathom one of them by dropping large fragments of granite; and calculating by the time that elapsed before reaching the bottom, we judged it to be over five hundred feet.
Franz had hurried us; now, he stopped, and bade us look above us. We did so, and were amply repaid for all our toil. To try to describe it would be in vain; and still the distinct outline is indelibly impressed upon my mind, and I am confident will never be effaced. We were standing in the midst of the rough waves and yawning abysses of this frozen sea; while almost perpendicularly from its brink the mountains rose, clothed with scanty herbage, and adorned with the tiny crimson blossoms of the rhododendron that bloomed upon their sides.
As the eye looked up the valley, every trace of vegetation died away; and the snowy mountains appeared to meet and mingle with each other.
We left the glacier, and ascending again to the hospice of Montanvert, I sat down by the side of Franz upon a block of granite, and looked again upon a scene the equal of which I never expect to see again.
There was a far away look in Franz's eyes. Was he thinking of the little cottage far up the mountain, and of Annette watching by the bedside of his sick father? Perhaps so; in any case I was glad that we had taken him. His could not be an everyday story, there must be some particular motive why he should want so earnestly to come. I would not question him then; but I determined to stop at the little cottage and learn for myself.
With all the untold glory above and beneath me, I felt oppressed with the littleness, as well as the greatness of my nature. How insignificant I appeared amid these gigantic forms; and still I exulted in the consciousness that "My Father made them all, that Father with whom I could commune, and whose Son I was privileged to love."
"And this God is our God," I was constrained to say aloud. Franz turned his speaking eye upon me.
"If it was not for this, how could we endure it?" he said, while there was a grave, calm look on his face, so little to be expected in a guide.
"How could we endure this grandeur, or our own littleness?" I asked.
"To know that God rules, giving each his place, to the mountains theirs, and to us ours. Insignificant we may be, and still we are each of us of more value than all the mountains in the universe. Jesus created mountains; but he died for us."
"Where did you learn this, Franz?"
"From the Bible, sir."
I saw it all; the Bible was the textbook he had studied. It was this which had given him that rare expression of face, and the words so far above the condition of life indicated by the little hamlet where he lived.
There was no more time, for the sun was going down, and we must go with it; and rising, we began to make the descent.
The moon was full orbed before we reached the cottage. I was weary beyond the power of utterance.