CHAPTER VIII 



AUTUMN IN THE ALPS 



* HEAR ye no sound of sobbing in the air ?' The 

 poetic pessimist is usually rampant at this season. 

 With long face and moist eye he sighs of 'the 

 ah-ness of things,' declares that 'in my heart is 

 grief,' and looks upon Nature as passing to the 

 tomb, meet subject for depression and tears. He 

 is the same, probably, who sang with such inordinate 

 optimism in the Spring ; for extremes do ever tend 

 to meet. Driven to a desperate optimism by the 

 wearying gloom of a blank, Winter-inspired pessi- 

 mism, he sang exuberantly of vernal promise, of 

 Summer's heated splendour ; and now here he is, 

 back once again in the depths of melancholy, having 

 travelled always in the same extravagantly ornate 

 yet dilapidated conveyance the year's cycle of 

 extreme emotion. For him Autumn is cause for 

 despondency and the wringing of hands. For him the 

 mountains are sombre and forbidding, the weather 

 fitful and wild, the bright fruits and berries but 



101 



