MIGRATIONS. 189 



no friend to consult, will halt to consider well before entering upon 

 the long ambush of the pass of Savoy. He pauses at the threshold, on 

 a friendly roof, well known to myself, or in the hallowed groves of 

 the Charmettes,* deliberates and says : " If I pass during the day, they 

 will all be there ; they know the season ; the eagle will pounce 

 upon me ; I die. If I pass by night, the great horn-owl (due), the 

 common owl (hibou), the entire host of horrible phantoms, with eyes 

 enlarged in the darkness, will seize me, and carry me off to their young. 

 Alas ! what shall I do ? I must endeavour to avoid both night and 

 day. At the gloomy hour of dawn, when the cold, raw air chills in his 

 eyrie the great fierce beast, which knows not how to build a nest, I may 

 fly unperceived. And even if he see me, I shall be leagues away before 

 he can put into motion the cumbrous machinery of his frozen wings." 



The calculation is judicious, but nevertheless a score of accidents 

 may disturb it. Starting at midnight, he may encounter in the face, 

 during his long flight across Savoy, the east wind, which engulfs and 

 delays him, neutralizes his exertions, and fetters his pinions. Heavens ! 

 it is morning now. Those sombre giants, already clothed in October 

 in their snowy mantles, reveal upon their vast expanse of glittering 

 white a black spot, which moves with terrible rapidity. How gloomy 

 are they already, these mountains, and of what evil augury, draped 

 in the long folds of their winter shrouds ! Motionless as are their 

 peaks, they create beneath them and around them an everlasting 

 agitation of violent and antagonistic currents, which struggle with 

 one another so furiously that at times they compel the bird to tarry. 

 "If I fly in the lower air, the torrents which hurl through the 

 shadows with their clanging floods, will snare me in their whirling 

 vapours. And if I mount to the cold and lofty realms, which kindle 

 with a light of their own, I give myself up to death ; the frost will 

 seize and slacken my wings." 



An effort has saved him. With head bent low, he plunges, he 

 falls into Italy. At Susa or towards Turin he builds a nest, and 

 strengthens his pinions. He recovers himself in the depth of the 

 * The favourite haunt of Jean Jacques Rousseau, on the bank of Lake Leman. 



