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 haltowed 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 (duc), the 
common owl (hibow), 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. 
