ake long promenades; she clambered up the
mountain-slopes, over slippery turf, in the hope of carrying home some
rare plant; but her strength was not equal to her valour--she could not
succeed in scaling those heights where flourished the _Edelweiss_.
A week after her arrival she had a surprise, we might even say a
pleasurable emotion, which was not comprised in the programme of
amusements that the proprietor of Hotel Badrutt undertook to procure for
his guests. Returning from an excursion to Lake Silvaplana, she found
in her chamber a basket containing a veritable sheaf of Alpine flowers,
freshly gathered, and among them not only _Edelweiss_ in profusion, but
several very rare plants, and the rarest of all a certain bell-flower
creeper, which smells like the apricot, and which, except in some
districts of the Engadine, is only found now in Siberia. This splendid
bouquet was accompanied by a note, thus conceived:

"A man who had had enough of life, resolved to hang himself. To execute
his dolorous design, he selected a lonely and dismal spot, where there
grew a solitary oak, whose sap was nearly exhausted. As he was engaged
in securing his cord, a bird alighted on the half-dead tree and began to
sing. The man said to himself: 'Since there is no spot so miserable that
a bird will not deign to sing in it, I will have the courage to live.'
And he lived.

"I arrived in this village disgusted with life, sorrowful and so weary
that I longed to die. I saw you pass by, and I know not what mysterious
virtue entered into me. I will live.

"'What matters it to me?' you will say, in reading these lines; and you
will be right. My sole excuse for having written them is, that I will
leave here in a few days; that you never will see me again, never know
who I am!"

The first impression of Antoinette was one of profound astonishment. She
would have taken it for granted that there was some mistake had not her
name been written in full on the envelope. Her second impulse was to
laugh at her adventure. She accorded full justice to Mlle. Moriaz; she
knew very well that she did not resemble the first chance comer;
but that her beauty would work miracles, resurrections; that a
hypochondriac, merely from seeing her pass by, was likely to regain his
taste for existence, scarcely appeared admissible to her. So great was
her curiosity, that she took the pains to make inquiries; the flowers
and the letter had been left by a little peasant, who