THE AUTHOR AT MONTREUX 
25 
seen through a single lens; others only through a 
transparency, by illuminating them beneath the mirror 
of the microscope. Others, insignificant or common¬ 
place by day, grow marvellous in the evening, when 
the focus of the instrument concentrates the lisdit. 
o 
To conclude: their study demands — what in the 
present age one least possesses—an isolation from the 
world, a point beyond time; the support of a blame¬ 
less curiosity, and of a constant and reverent love of 
these imperceptible existences. Theirs is a kind of 
virginal and solitary maternity. 
I was not released from my absorption in that 
terrible sixteenth century until the spring of 1856. 
“ The Bird ” had also made its appearance. I sought 
an interval of rest, and established myself at Mon- 
treux, near Clarens, on the Lake of Geneva. But this 
most delightful locality, awakening in me a keen per¬ 
ception of Nature, did not restore my tranquillity. I 
was still too much affected by the bloody story I had 
been narrating. A flame burned within me which 
nothing could extinguish. I rambled along the roads, 
with my cup of fir-wood, tasting the water at ever}^ 
fountain—all so fresh and so pure !—and demanding of 
them if any possessed the property of effacing the 
bitternesses of the Past and Present, and which, out 
of so many springs, might prove to me a Lethe. 
At length I found, at about half a league from 
Lucerne, an old convent transformed into a hostelry, 
where I selected for my study the parlour, a very spacious apartment, 
which, through its seven windows opening on the mountains, the lake, 
ley 
