328 PRÆTERITA-II

as safe in the embracing sweep of it as if it were set in a brooch of sapphire.

92. And the day went on, as the river; but I never felt that I wasted time in watching the Rhone. One used to get giddy sometimes, or discontentedly envious of the fish. Then one went back for a walk in the penthouse street, long ago gone. There was no such other street anywhere. Penthouses five stories high, not so much for the protection of the people in the street as to keep the plash of heavy rain from the house windows, so that these might be the more safely open. Beam-pillars of squared pine, with one cross-tie beam, the undecorative structural arrangement, Swiss to the very heart and pitch of it, picturesque in comfort, stately and ancient without decay, and rough, here in mid Geneva, more than in the hill solitudes.

93. We arrived at Geneva on 1st June, 1844, with plan of another month at Chamouni;¹ and fine things afterwards, which also came prosperously to pass. I had learned to draw now with great botanical precision; and could colour delicately, to a point of high finish. I was interested in everything, from clouds to lichens. Geneva was more wonderful to me, the Alps more living and mighty, than ever; Chamouni more peaceful.

We reached the Prieure on the 6th June, and found poor Michel Devouassoud’s climbing days ended. He had got a chill, and a cough; medicined himself with absinthe, and was now fast dying. The body of guides had just sustained a graver loss, by the superannuation, according to law, in his sixtieth year, of Joseph Couttet,² the Captain of Mont Blanc, and bravest at once and most sagacious of the old school of guides. Partly in regard for the old

¹ [For the itinerary of the tour of 1844, see Vol. IV. p. xxii. n.]

² [For Joseph Marie Couttet, called “the captain of Mont Blanc” from his numerous ascents of that mountain, see Vol. IV. pp. xxiv.-xxv. n., and the other passages there noted. Among his famous ascents was that of 1822 with Dr. Hamel, in which the guide nearly lost his life (see The Annals of Mont Blanc, by C. E. Mathews, pp. 228-229): this is the subject of Ruskin’s poem, “The Avalanche” (see Vol. II. p. 7). Ruskin commemorated his old friend and guide in an inscription attached to some Rose-Fluors presented to the Natural History Museum: see Vol. XXVI. p. lv.]

[Version 0.04: March 2008]