. The breath of the men was cloud, the
breath of the mules was cloud, the lights were encircled by cloud,
speakers close at hand were not seen for cloud, though their voices and
all other sounds were surprisingly clear. Of the cloudy line of mules
hastily tied to rings in the wall, one would bite another, or kick
another, and then the whole mist would be disturbed: with men diving
into it, and cries of men and beasts coming out of it, and no bystander
discerning what was wrong. In the midst of this, the great stable of the
convent, occupying the basement story and entered by the basement door,
outside which all the disorder was, poured forth its contribution of
cloud, as if the whole rugged edifice were filled with nothing else,
and would collapse as soon as it had emptied itself, leaving the snow to
fall upon the bare mountain summit.

While all this noise and hurry were rife among the living travellers,
there, too, silently assembled in a grated house half-a-dozen paces
removed, with the same cloud enfolding them and the same snow flakes
drifting in upon them, were the dead travellers found upon the mountain.
The mother, storm-belated many winters ago, still standing in the corner
with her baby at her breast; the man who had frozen with his arm raised
to his mouth in fear or hunger, still pressing it with his dry lips
after years and years. An awful company, mysteriously come together! A
wild destiny for that mother to have foreseen! 'Surrounded by so many
and such companions upon whom I never looked, and never shall look,
I and my child will dwell together inseparable, on the Great Saint
Bernard, outlasting generations who will come to see us, and will never
know our name, or one word of our story but the end.'

The living travellers thought little or nothing of the dead just then.
They thought much more of alighting at the convent door, and warming
themselves at the convent fire. Disengaged from the turmoil, which was
already calming down as the crowd of mules began to be bestowed in the
stable, they hurried shivering up the steps and into the building. There
was a smell within, coming up from the floor, of tethered beasts, like
the smell of a menagerie of wild animals. There were strong arched
galleries within, huge stone piers, great staircases, and thick walls
pierced with small sunken windows--fortifications against the mountain
storms, as if they had been human enemies. There were gloomy vaulted
sleeping-rooms