gently, Clara and Evelyn were at play, sometimes beating the water with large boughs, sometimes watching the summer-flies that sported upon it.  Evelyn now chased a butterfly—­now gathered a flower for his cousin; and his laughing cherub-face and clear brow told of the light heart that beat in his bosom.  Clara, though she endeavoured to give herself up to his amusement, often forgot him, as she turned to observe Adrian and me.  She was now fourteen, and retained her childish appearance, though in height a woman; she acted the part of the tenderest mother to my little orphan boy; to see her playing with him, or attending silently and submissively on our wants, you thought only of her admirable docility and patience; but, in her soft eyes, and the veined curtains that veiled them, in the clearness of her marmoreal brow, and the tender expression of her lips, there was an intelligence and beauty that at once excited admiration and love.

When the sun had sunk towards the precipitate west, and the evening shadows grew long, we prepared to ascend the mountain.  The attention that we were obliged to pay to the sick, made our progress slow.  The winding road, though steep, presented a confined view of rocky fields and hills, each hiding the other, till our farther ascent disclosed them in succession.  We were seldom shaded from the declining sun, whose slant beams were instinct with exhausting heat.  There are times when minor difficulties grow gigantic —­times, when as the Hebrew poet expressively terms it, “the grasshopper is a burthen;” so was it with our ill fated party this evening.  Adrian, usually the first to rally his spirits, and dash foremost into fatigue and hardship, with relaxed limbs and declined head, the reins hanging loosely in his grasp, left the choice of the path to the instinct of his horse, now and then painfully rousing himself, when the steepness of the ascent required that he should keep his seat with better care.  Fear and horror encompassed me.  Did his languid air attest that he also was struck with contagion?  How long, when I look on this matchless specimen of mortality, may I perceive that his thought answers mine? how long will those limbs obey the kindly spirit within? how long will light and life dwell in the eyes of this my sole remaining friend?  Thus pacing slowly, each hill surmounted, only presented another to be ascended; each jutting corner only discovered another, sister to the last, endlessly.  Sometimes the pressure of sickness in one among us, caused the whole cavalcade to halt; the call for water, the eagerly expressed wish to repose; the cry of pain, and suppressed sob of the mourner—­such were the sorrowful attendants of our passage of the Jura.

Adrian had gone first.  I saw him, while I was detained by the loosening of a girth, struggling with the upward path, seemingly more difficult than any we had yet passed.  He reached the top, and the dark outline of his figure stood in relief against the sky.  He seemed to behold something unexpected and wonderful; for, pausing, his head stretched out, his arms for a moment extended, he seemed to give an All Hail! to some new vision.  Urged by curiosity, I hurried to join him.  After battling for many tedious minutes with the precipice, the same scene presented itself to me, which had wrapt him in extatic wonder.