the season--began to fall. I watched the white vision of the flakes
against the grey vision of the crags, and I thought that this path,
which I had chosen as my road to Summer, was like the path by which holy
men slowly gain Paradise, treading difficult ways through life that they
may attain at last those eternal roses which bloom beyond the granite
and the snows. Up and up I rode, into the clouds and the night, into the
veil of the world, into the icy winds of the heights. An eagle screamed
above my head, poised like a black shadow in the opaque gloom. That
flying life was the only life in this waste.

"And then my mule, edging ever to the precipice as a man to his fate,
sidled round a promontory of rock and set its feet in snow. For we had
passed the snow-line. And upon the snow lay thin spears of yellow light.
They streamed from the lattices of the monastery which crowns the very
summit of the pass.

III

"At this monastery I was to spend the night. The good monks entertain
all travellers, and in summer-time their hospitalities are lavishly
exercised. But in winter, wanderers are few, and these holy men are left
almost undisturbed in their meditative solitudes. My mule paused upon a
rocky plateau before the door of the narrow grey building. The guide
struck upon the heavy wood. After a while we were admitted by a robed
figure, who greeted us kindly and made us welcome. Within, the place was
bare and poor enough, but scrupulously clean. I was led through long,
broad, and bitterly cold corridors to a big chamber in which I was to
pass the night. Here were ranged in a row four large beds with white
curtains. I occupied one bed, my servant another. The rest were
untenanted. The walls were lined with light wood. The wooden floor was
uncarpeted. I threw open the narrow window. Dimly I could see a mountain
of rocks, on which snow lay in patches, towering up into the clouds in
front of me. And to the left there was a glimmer of water. On the
morrow, by that water, I should ride down into the land of flowers to
which I was bound. Till then I would allow my imagination to luxuriate
in the bleak romance of this wild home of prayer. The pathos of the
night, shivering in the snow, and of this brotherhood of aspiring souls,
detached from the excitement of the world for ever, seeking restlessly
their final salvation day by day, night by night, in clouds of mountain
vapour and sanctified incense, entered into my soul. And I th