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CHAPTER VI.
EVENTFUL winter passed; winter, the respite of our ills. By degrees the
sun, which with slant beams had before yielded the more extended reign to
night, lengthened his diurnal journey, and mounted his highest throne, at
once the fosterer of earth's new beauty, and her lover. We who, like flies
that congregate upon a dry rock at the ebbing of the tide, had played
wantonly with time, allowing our passions, our hopes, and our mad desires
to rule us, now heard the approaching roar of the ocean of destruction, and
would have fled to some sheltered crevice, before the first wave broke over
us. We resolved without delay, to commence our journey to Switzerland; we
became eager to leave France. Under the icy vaults of the glaciers, beneath
the shadow of the pines, the swinging of whose mighty branches was arrested
by a load of snow; beside the streams whose intense cold proclaimed their
origin to be from the slow-melting piles of congelated waters, amidst
frequent storms which might purify the air, we should find health, if in
truth health were not herself diseased.
We began our preparations at first with alacrity. We did not now bid adieu
to our native country, to the graves of those we loved, to the flowers, and
streams, and trees, which had lived beside us from infancy. Small sorrow
would be ours on leaving Paris. A scene of shame, when we remembered our
late contentions, and thought that we left behind a flock of miserable,
deluded victims, bending under the tyranny of a selfish impostor. Small
pangs should we feel in leaving the gardens, woods, and halls of the
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