as night was falling.
They could not have gone another step, and here they must needs
rest.

The hermit could give them no news of Master Zacharius. They
could scarcely hope to find him still living amid these sad
solitudes. The night was dark, the wind howled amid the
mountains, and the avalanches roared down from the summits of the
broken crags.

Aubert and Gerande, crouching before the hermit's hearth, told
him their melancholy tale. Their mantles, covered with snow, were
drying in a corner; and without, the hermit's dog barked
lugubriously, and mingled his voice with that of the tempest.

"Pride," said the hermit to his guests, "has destroyed an angel
created for good. It is the stumbling-block against which the
destinies of man strike. You cannot reason with pride, the
principal of all the vices, since, by its very nature, the proud
man refuses to listen to it. It only remains, then, to pray for
your father!"

All four knelt down, when the barking of the dog redoubled, and
some one knocked at the door of the hermitage.

"Open, in the devil's name!"

The door yielded under the blows, and a dishevelled, haggard,
ill-clothed man appeared.

"My father!" cried Gerande.

It was Master Zacharius.

"Where am I?" said he. "In eternity! Time is ended--the hours no
longer strike--the hands have stopped!"

"Father!" returned Gerande, with so piteous an emotion that the
old man seemed to return to the world of the living.

"Thou here, Gerande?" he cried; "and thou, Aubert? Ah, my dear
betrothed ones, you are going to be married in our old church!"

"Father," said Gerande, seizing him by the arm, "come home to
Geneva,--come with us!"

The old man tore away from his daughter's embrace and hurried
towards the door, on the threshold of which the snow was falling
in large flakes.

"Do not abandon your children!" cried Aubert.

"Why return," replied the old man sadly, "to those places which
my life has already quitted, and where a part of myself is for
ever buried?"

"Your soul is not dead," said the hermit solemnly.

"My soul? O no,--its wheels are good! I perceive it beating
regularly--"

"Your soul is immaterial,--your soul is immortal!" replied the
hermit sternly.

"Yes--like my glory! But it is shut up in the chateau of
Andernatt, and I wish to see it again!"

The hermit crossed himself; Scholastique became almost inanimate.
Aubert held Gerande in his arms.

"The chateau of Andernatt is inhabite