a more beautiful invention."

Ten hours later, a post-chaise bore in the direction of Engadine Mlle.
Antoinette Moriaz, her father, her _demoiselle de compagnie_, and
her _femme de chambre_. They breakfasted tolerably well in a village
situated in the lower portion of a notch, called Tiefenkasten, which
means, literally, _deep chest_, and certainly a deeper never has been
seen. After breakfast they pursued their way farther, and towards four
o'clock in the afternoon they reached the entrance of the savage defile
of Bergunerstein, which deserves to be compared with that of Via Mala.
The road lies between a wall of rocks and a precipice of nearly two
hundred metres, at the bottom of which rush the swift waters of the
Albula. This wild scenery deeply moved Mlle. Moriaz; she never had seen
anything like it at Cormeilles or anywhere about Paris. She alighted,
and, moving towards the parapet, leaned over it, contemplating at her
ease the depths below, which the foaming torrent beneath filled with its
roars.

Her father speedily joined her.

"Do you not find this music charming?" she asked of him.

"Charming, I grant," he replied; "but more charming still are those
brave workmen who, at the risk of their necks, have engineered such a
suspended highway as we see here. I think you admire the torrent too
much, and the road not enough." And after a pause he added, "I wish
that our friend Camille Langis had had fewer dangers to contend with in
constructing his." Antoinette turned quickly and looked at her father;
then she bestowed her attention once more upon the Albula. "To be sure,"
resumed M. Moriaz, stroking his whiskers with the head of his cane,
"Camille is just the man to make his way through difficulties. He has
a youthful air that is very deceptive, but he always has been
astonishingly precocious. At twenty years of age he became head of
his class at the Central School; but the best thing about him is that,
although in possession of a fortune, yet he has a passion for work. The
rich man who works accepts voluntary poverty."

There arose from the precipice a damp, chill breeze; Mlle. Moriaz drew
over her head a red hood that she held in her hand, and scraping off
with her finger some of the facing of the parapet, which glittered with
scales of mica, she asked: "What do you call this?"

"It is gneiss, a sort of sheet-granite; but do not you too admire people
who work when they are not compelled to do anything?"

"The