Hugo had seized the picture of the glories of the
mountain wasting themselves before the gaze of the senseless idiot.
Apart from geographical conditions and hygienic defects there is an
interesting aesthetic problem connected with the presence of idiots in
the mountains. It is not only the idiot who is indifferent to the
beauties of the Alps; the sane and healthy peasant whose eyes wander
over the glaciers and snow-fields as he rests for a few minutes from
hoeing his potatoes is not moved by the sight to ecstatic delight.

I have many dear friends amongst peasants. They are richly endowed with
common sense and kindness of heart; their brains can compete favourably
with those of the folk of any other country. Their hard struggle with a
rebellious soil has given them a quiet determination and tenacity of
purpose which are the root of Alpine enterprise and resourcefulness.
They possess character and independence in a high degree--mental
reflexes of the peaks of freedom, ever before their eyes. But they,
children of the mountain, born and bred amidst its beauties, are
surprisingly insensitive to beauty.

I remember one exquisite sunset--one of those superlative sunsets that
burn themselves into the consciousness with a joy akin to pain, and of
which only a few are allotted to each human life. I stood watching the
sinking sun throw a crimson net over the snow mountains as the shadow of
night crept slowly up the hillside. The sky took on an opal light in
which were merged and transcended all the colours of the day. Every
pinnacle and rock was lit up as by a heavenly fire, the pines were
outlined like black sentinels against the sky, guardians of that
merciful green life from which we spring and to which we return. My old
friend the goat-herd and daily messenger from the highest pastures stood
beside me. "Beautiful, Pierre," I said, "and in this you have lived all
your life."

"Yes," he said, slowly shifting the pipe from the left side of his
mouth to the right; "the cheese is fat and good in the mountains, and
the milk is not poisonous as it is in the plains, but it is hard work
for the back to carry it down twice a day." He looked at me as if
searching for better understanding. "But I will tell you something
nice," he added, by way of stirring up my sluggish imagination; "the
little brown cow has calved, and this autumn we are going to kill the
old cow, and we shall have good meat all the winter."

Far be it from me to j