The artillery consisted of a rusty blunderbuss. This
derision was just what Napoleon desired. Though dwelling in the
shadow of that mysterious melancholy, which ever enveloped his
spirit, he must have enjoyed in the deep recesses of his soul, the
majestic movements of his plans.
On the eastern frontiers of France there surge up, from luxuriant
meadows and vine-clad fields and hill sides, the majestic ranges of
the Alps, piercing the clouds and soaring with glittering pinnacles,
into the region of perpetual ice and snow. Vast spurs of the mountains
extend on each side, opening gloomy gorges and frightful detiles,
through which foaming torrents rush impetuously, walled in by
almost precipitous cliffs, whose summits, crowned with melancholy
firs, are inaccessible to the foot of man. The principal pass over
this enormous ridge was that of the Great St. Bernard. The traveler,
accompanied by a guide, and mounted on a mule, slowly and painfully
ascended a steep and rugged path, now crossing a narrow bridge,
spanning a fathomless abyss, again creeping along the edge of a
precipice, where the eagle soared and screamed over the fir tops
in the abyss below, and where a perpendicular wall rose to giddy
heights in the clouds above.
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