pied the sky with a sublime invasion: and the things
proper to the sky were forgotten by me in their presence as I gazed.

To what emotion shall I compare this astonishment? So, in first love
one finds that _this_ can belong to _me._

Their sharp steadfastness and their clean uplifted lines compelled my
adoration. Up there, the sky above and below them, part of the sky,
but part of us, the great peaks made communion between that homing
creeping part of me which loves vineyards and dances and a slow
movement among pastures, and that other part which is only properly at
home in Heaven. I say that this kind of description is useless, and
that it is better to address prayers to such things than to attempt to
interpret them for others.

These, the great Alps, seen thus, link one in some way to one's
immortality. Nor is it possible to convey, or even to suggest, those
few fifty miles, and those few thousand feet; there is something more.
Let me put it thus: that from the height of Weissenstein I saw, as it
were, my religion. I mean, humility, the fear of death, the terror of
height and of distance, the glory of God, the infinite potentiality of
reception whence springs that divine thirst of the soul; my aspiration
also towards completion, and my confidence in the dual destiny. For I
know that we laughers have a gross cousinship with the most high, and
it is this contrast and perpetual quarrel which feeds a spring of
merriment in the soul of a sane man.

Since I could now see such a wonder and it could work such things in
my mind, therefore, some day I should be part of it. That is what I
felt.

This it is also which leads some men to climb mountain-tops, but not
me, for I am afraid of slipping down.

Then you will say, if I felt all this, why do I draw it, and put it in
my book, seeing that my drawings are only for fun? My jest drags down
such a memory and makes it ludicrous. Well, I said in my beginning
that I would note down whatever most impressed me, except figures,
which I cannot draw (I mean figures of human beings, for mathematical
figures I can draw well enough), and I have never failed in this
promise, except where, as in the case of Porrentruy, my drawing was
blown away by the wind and lost--- if anything ever is lost. So I put
down here this extraordinary drawing of what I saw, which is about as
much like it as a printed song full of misprints is to that same song
sung by an army on the march. And I am conso