But, when all is said, these fields of white and blots of
crude black forest are but a trite and staring substitute for the
infinite variety and pleasantness of the earth's face. Even a
boulder, whose front is too precipitous to have retained the snow,
seems, if you come upon it in your walk, a perfect gem of colour,
reminds you almost painfully of other places, and brings into your
head the delights of more Arcadian days - the path across the meadow,
the hazel dell, the lilies on the stream, and the scents, the
colours, and the whisper of the woods. And scents here are as rare
as colours. Unless you get a gust of kitchen in passing some hotel,
you shall smell nothing all day long but the faint and choking odour
of frost. Sounds, too, are absent: not a bird pipes, not a bough
waves, in the dead, windless atmosphere. If a sleigh goes by, the
sleigh-bells ring, and that is all; you work all winter through to no
other accompaniment but the crunching of your steps upon the frozen
snow.
It is the curse of the Alpine valleys to be each one village from one
end to the other. Go where you please, houses will still be in
sight, before and behind you, and to the right and left.
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