rian tourist, who had paused beneath a
fir-tree. This tourist had set out from Chur in the diligence. At the
entrance of the defile, leaving his luggage to continue without him to
Saint Moritz, he had alighted, and with his haversack on his back had
set forward on foot for Bergun, where he proposed passing the night,
as did also M. Moriaz. Of the conversation between Antoinette and her
father he had caught only one word. This word, however, sped like an
arrow into his ear, and from his ear into the innermost recesses of his
brain, where it long quivered. It was a treasure, this word; and he did
not cease to meditate upon it, to comment on it, to extract from it all
its essence, until he had reached the first houses of Bergun, like a
mendicant who has picked up in a dusty road a well-filled purse, and who
opens it, closes it, opens it again, counts his prize piece by piece,
and adds up its value twenty times over. Our tourist dined at the _table
d'hote_; he was so preoccupied that he ate the trout caught in the
Albula without suspecting that they possessed a marvellous freshness, an
exquisite flavour and delicacy, and yet it is notorious that the trout
of the Albula are the first trout of the universe.
Mlle. Moiseney, the duties of whose office consisted in serving as
chaperon to Mlle. Moriaz, was not a great genius. This worthy and
excellent personage had, in fact, rather a circumscribed mind, and she
had not the least suspicion of it. Her physiognomy was not pleasing to
M. Moriaz; he had several times besought his daughter to part with her.
In the goodness of her soul Antoinette always refused; she was not one
who could countenance rebuffs to old domestics, old dogs, old horses,
or worn-out governesses. Young Candide arrived at the conclusion, as the
result of his observations, that the first degree of happiness would
be to be Mlle. Gunegonde, and the second to contemplate her throughout
life. Mlle. Moiseney believed that it would be the first degree of
superhuman felicity to be Mlle. Moriaz, the second to pass one's life
near this queen, who, arbitrary and capricious though she might be, was
most thoughtful of the happiness of her subjects, and to be able to
say: "It was I that hatched the egg whence arose this phoenix; I did
something for this marvel; I taught her English and music." She had
boundless admiration for her queen, amounting actually to idolatry. The
English profess that their sovereigns can do nothing am
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