head and
flapped their wings in his face. But on he went. His lungs, distended by
the rarified atmosphere, threatened to burst with an explosion akin to a
steamboat's. Finally, after superhuman efforts, bleeding, panting,
gasping for breath, Milord sank exhausted upon the rocks.

What a labor! but what a triumph! what a struggle! but what a conquest!
The thought of being able, the coming winter, to boast of having carved
his name where, until then, God alone had written his.

And Sir Francis! who would not fail to plume himself on the joint favors
of Chimborazo, how humiliated he would be to learn that Lord K., more
fastidious in his amours, more exalted in his ambition, had not, four
thousand fathoms above sea, feared to pluck the rose of Tschamalouri!

I remember that the first night I passed in Rome I heard in my sleep a
mysterious voice murmuring at my pillow: "Rome! Rome! thou art in Rome!"

Milord, shattered, sore and helpless, also heard a charming voice
singing sweetly in his ear: "Thou art stretched full length upon the
summit of Tschamalouri."

This melody insensibly affected him as the balm of Fier-a-Bras. He
rallied, he arose, and with radiant face, sparkling eyes and bosom
swelling with pride, drew a poniard from its sheath and prepared to cut
his name upon the rock. Suddenly he turned pale, his limbs gave way
under him, the knife dropped from his grasp and fell blunted upon the
rocks. What had he seen? What could have happened to so agitate him in
these inaccessible regions?

There, upon the tablet of granite where he was about to inscribe the
name of his ancestors, he read, unhappy man, distinctly read, these two
names distinctly cut in the flint, "William and Lavinia," with the
following inscription, in English, underneath: "Here, July 25th, 1831,
two tender hearts communed."

Surmounting the whole was a flaming double heart pierced by an arrow, an
arrow that then pierced three hearts at once. The rock was covered
besides with more than fifty names, all English, and as many
inscriptions, all English too, of a kindred character to the one he had
read. Milord's first impulse was to throw himself head foremost down the
mountain side; but, fortunately, raising his eyes in his despair, he
discovered a final plateau, so steep that neither cat nor lizard could
climb it. Lord K. became a bird and flew up, and what did he see? Oh,
the vanity of human ambition! Upon the last round of the most gigantic
lad