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It is said that the late emperor of Russia, after the laborious and successful diplomatic intrigues of messrs. Talleyrand and Sieyes, and a certain lady, became enamoured, by description, with the immaculate goddess of Mont Blanc, and that he sent confidential commissioners to Paris, to report her daily dress, and to order copies of her furniture.
On my solitary strolls, it is true, I generally took a volume of Byron with me, because I possessed a miniature edition, to read on some mountain height with a view of Mont Blanc, but I soon left it at home, for I realised that I hardly ever drew it from my pocket. The only work I permitted myself was the sketching of plans for building myself a house.
There was a liberal allowance of pretty waterfalls, too, on the Tête Noir route. About half an hour before we reached the village of Argentière a vast dome of snow with the sun blazing on it drifted into view and framed itself in a strong V-shaped gateway of the mountains, and we recognized Mont Blanc, the "monarch of the Alps."
By this insignificant runlet, therefore, rather more than two tons of the substance of the Mont Blanc are displaced and carried down a certain distance every week; and as it is only for three or four months that the flow of the stream is checked by frost, we may certainly allow eighty tons for the mass which it annually moves.
The man who is tied to his desk sometimes thinks everything would be right if only he could travel. But many a man has done the Grand Tour and come back no better contented. You cannot fool your soul with Mont Blanc or even the Himalayas. So many thousand feet, did you say? but what is that to infinity! The cure for the fretful soul is not to go round the world; it is to get beyond it.
On our way there, avore ever we got so far south as Cape Blanc, we captured a Portingal caravel; pickin' up another of 'em a little way to the nor'ard of Cape Verde.
But there was plainly no help for it; and after a brief, agitated consultation, the young men left the office to join Madame and Mademoiselle le Blanc at the Widow Carson's, in the Grande Rue, or Rue de Paris, as the only decent street in Havre-de-Grâce was at that time indifferently named, both for the purpose of communicating the untoward state of affairs, and that Eugène might take a lingering, last farewell of Adéline.
Here, the sole occupant of the shining stream was a maternal swan, white as a cloud on the summit of Mont Blanc, floating in stately ease up and down the water, carrying her young brood of cygnets on her back, under the snowy curve of her arching wings. Walden unchained the punt and sprang into it, Nebbie dutifully following, and then divested himself of his coat.
Three years later, Mme. Blanc returns to the discussion of Mark Twain, in an essay in the 'Revue des Deux Mondes', entitled 'L'age Dore en Amerique' an elaborate review and analysis of The Gilded Age.
Our standard will rally around us the whole warlike and fraternal cohorts. What more are we waiting for?" On the other hand, Louis Blanc said, "Humanity restrains me. I ask if you are entitled to dispose of the blood of a generous people, without any prospect of advantage to the cause of democracy.