“Thou here, Gerande?” he cried; “and thou, Aubert? Ah, my dear betrothed ones, you are going to be married in our old church!” “Father,” said Gerande, seizing him by the arm, “come home to Geneva,—come with us!” The old man tore away from his daughter’s embrace and hurried towards the door, on the threshold of which the snow was falling in large flakes. “Do not abandon your children!” cried Aubert. “Why return,” replied the old man sadly, “to those places which my life has already quitted, and where a part of myself is for ever buried?” “Your soul is not dead,” said the hermit solemnly. “My soul? O no,—its wheels are good! I perceive it beating regularly—” “Your soul is immaterial,—your soul is immortal!” replied the hermit sternly. “Yes—like my glory! But it is shut up in the château of Andernatt, and I wish to see it again!” The hermit crossed himself; Scholastique became almost inanimate. Aubert held Gerande in his arms. “The château of Andernatt is inhabited by one who is lost,” said the hermit, “one who does not salute the cross of my hermitage.” “My father, go not thither!” “I want my soul! My soul is mine—” “Hold him! Hold my father!” cried Gerande. But the old man had leaped across the threshold, and plunged into the night, crying, “Mine, mine, my soul!” Gerande, Aubert, and Scholastique hastened after him. They went by difficult paths, across which Master Zacharius sped like a tempest, urged by an irresistible force. The snow raged around them, and mingled its white flakes with the froth of the swollen torrents. As they passed the chapel erected in memory of the massacre of the Theban legion, they hurriedly crossed themselves. Master Zacharius was not to be seen. At last the village of Evionnaz appeared in the midst of this sterile region. The hardest heart would have been moved to see this hamlet, lost among these horrible solitudes. The old man sped on, and plunged into the deepest gorge of the Dents-du-Midi, which pierce the sky with their sharp peaks. Soon a ruin, old and gloomy as the rocks at its base, rose before him. “It is there—there!” he cried, hastening his pace still more frantically. [Illustration: “It is there—there!”] The château of Andernatt was a ruin even then. A thick, crumbling tower rose above it, and seemed to menace with its downfall the old gables which reared themselves below. The vast piles of jagged stones were gloomy to look on. Several dark halls appeared amid the debris, with caved-in ceilings, now become the abode of vipers.