mounted up and up, until finally it was lost in the
cloud which, since early evening, had been resting on the summit of
Mount Get, like a kite awaiting its prey. The snow crunched under our
feet. The atmosphere grew so rarefied that to breathe was painful; ever
and anon the blood rushed to my head, but withal a certain rapturous
sensation was diffused throughout my veins and I felt a species of
delight at being so high up above the world. A childish feeling, I
admit, but, when we retire from the conventions of society and draw
close to nature, we involuntarily become as children: each attribute
acquired by experience falls away from the soul, which becomes anew such
as it was once and will surely be again. He whose lot it has been, as
mine has been, to wander over the desolate mountains, long, long to
observe their fantastic shapes, greedily to gulp down the life-giving
air diffused through their ravines--he, of course, will understand my
desire to communicate, to narrate, to sketch those magic pictures.

Well, at length we reached the summit of Mount Gut and, halting, looked
around us. Upon the mountain a grey cloud was hanging, and its cold
breath threatened the approach of a storm; but in the east everything
was so clear and golden that we--that is, the staff-captain and
I--forgot all about the cloud... Yes, the staff-captain too; in
simple hearts the feeling for the beauty and grandeur of nature is a
hundred-fold stronger and more vivid than in us, ecstatic composers of
narratives in words and on paper.

"You have grown accustomed, I suppose, to these magnificent pictures!" I
said.

"Yes, sir, you can even grow accustomed to the whistling of a bullet,
that is to say, accustomed to concealing the involuntary thumping of
your heart."

"I have heard, on the contrary, that many an old warrior actually finds
that music agreeable."

"Of course, if it comes to that, it is agreeable; but only just because
the heart beats more violently. Look!" he added, pointing towards the
east. "What a country!"

And, indeed, such a panorama I can hardly hope to see elsewhere. Beneath
us lay the Koishaur Valley, intersected by the Aragva and another stream
as if by two silver threads; a bluish mist was gliding along the valley,
fleeing into the neighbouring defiles from the warm rays of the morning.
To right and left the mountain crests, towering higher and higher,
intersected each other and stretched out, covered with snows and