INFLUENCE OF THE ALPS. 
27 
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Drink; it is the grandest cup which quenches the 
thirst of humanity. 
I began to feel less athirst. In the middle of 
summer the nights were cold, the mornings and even- ^ 
ings fresh. Those spotless snows, which I gazed at so 
eagerly and with insatiable eyes, purified me, it seemed, 
from the long, dusty, sun-burned, blood-besprinkled, 
and sublime, but also sometimes miry, revolutions of 
history. I recovered a little my equilibrium between 
the drama of the world and the eternal epopea. 
What can be more divine than these Alps ? Else¬ 
where I have called them “ the common altar of 
Europe.” And wherefore ? Not on account of their 
height,— a little higher, or a little lower, one is no 
nearer heaven,—but because the grand harmony, else¬ 
where vague, is palpable here. The solidarity of life, 
the circulation of nature, the beneficent concord of the 
elements,—all is visible. It kindles a glorious illumi¬ 
nation. 
Each chain filters from its glacier, as a revelation 
of the inaccessible zone, a torrent which, concentrated, 
tranquillized and purified in an ample lake,—translated 
into pure and azure water,—emerges as a great river, 
and diffuses everywhere the soul of the Alps. From 
these innumerable waters reascend to the mountains 
the mists which renew the treasure of their glaciers. 
All is in such perfect sympathy, and the perspectives |V A^ 
are so noble, that the lakes and their rivers still reflect or 
survey, as they wander afar, the grave assemblage of the mountains, the 
upper snows, the sublime virgin peaks of which they are an emanation. 
