which to move the world.
Power leaves us just as it finds us; only great natures grow greater
by its means. Raphael had had everything in his power, and he had done
nothing.

At the springs of Mont Dore he came again in contact with a little world
of people, who invariably shunned him with the eager haste that animals
display when they scent afar off one of their own species lying dead,
and flee away. The dislike was mutual. His late adventure had given him
a deep distaste for society; his first care, consequently, was to find
a lodging at some distance from the neighborhood of the springs.
Instinctively he felt within him the need of close contact with nature,
of natural emotions, and of the vegetative life into which we sink so
gladly among the fields.

The day after he arrived he climbed the Pic de Sancy, not without
difficulty, and visited the higher valleys, the skyey nooks,
undiscovered lakes, and peasants' huts about Mont Dore, a country whose
stern and wild features are now beginning to tempt the brushes of our
artists, for sometimes wonderfully fresh and charming views are to be
found there, affording a strong contrast to the frowning brows of those
lonely hills.

Barely a league from the village Raphael discovered a nook where nature
seemed to have taken a pleasure in hiding away all her treasures like
some glad and mischievous child. At the first sight of this unspoiled
and picturesque retreat, he determined to take up his abode in it.
There, life must needs be peaceful, natural, and fruitful, like the life
of a plant.

Imagine for yourself an inverted cone of granite hollowed out on a large
scale, a sort of basin with its sides divided up by queer winding paths.
On one side lay level stretches with no growth upon them, a bluish
uniform surface, over which the rays of the sun fell as upon a mirror;
on the other lay cliffs split open by fissures and frowning ravines;
great blocks of lava hung suspended from them, while the action of rain
slowly prepared their impending fall; a few stunted trees tormented
by the wind, often crowned their summits; and here and there in some
sheltered angle of their ramparts a clump of chestnut-trees grew tall as
cedars, or some cavern in the yellowish rocks showed the dark entrance
into its depths, set about by flowers and brambles, decked by a little
strip of green turf.

At the bottom of this cup, which perhaps had been the crater of an
old-world volcano, lay a pool of