As we approached the mountains, however, it became colder and more cold, and the prospect of their snowy passes fell chill and cheerless upon our anticipations. Yet there was something vast and majestic in their aspect, which raised and elevated the mind above the petty cares and sorrows of existence. I had been grave, I had been gloomy--I had been perhaps peevish--but the contrast between the transitory littleness of all human things, and the eternal grandeur of such objects, reproved the impatient repinings of my heart. I felt a consolation in looking upon them as they stretched along before me, in the same bold towering forms that they had presented unmemoried centuries ago. It seemed as if they said, "Ages and generations, nations and languages, have passed away and been forgotten, with all their idle hopes and vain solicitudes, while we have stood unmoved, unaged, unaltered. Even Time, the inexorable enemy of all man's works, lays not upon us his profaning finger; and while he overthrows the arch that records man's glory, and hurls down the column that monuments his grave, he dares not spoil the fabrics of that great God who created him and us." Under the influence of such thoughts, the recollections of the last two days gradually lost themselves; and though I rode along, grave and perhaps melancholy, my melancholy was not of that bitter and gloomy nature produced by worldly cares and griefs. Father Francis was well acquainted with the many changes of my mood, and, consequently, found it not at all extraordinary that I was silent and thoughtful; but, attributing my seriousness to the events which had happened at Saragossa, he wisely let them sleep, hoping that they would soon pass from my memory. Towards the evening, on the second day of our journey, we arrived at a little village consisting of about half a dozen shepherds' huts, situated at the very foot of the mountains; and here we learned that the _Port de Gavarnie_, by which we intended to have entered France, was completely blocked up with snow; but that less had fallen near Gabas, and that, consequently, the passes in that direction were practicable. Thither, then, we directed our steps the next morning, having procured a guide amongst the shepherds, who agreed to conduct us as far as Laruns, though he often looked at the sky, which had by this time become covered with heavy leaden-looking clouds, and shook his head, saying, that we must make all speed. There was but little good augury in his looks, and less in the prospect around us; for, as we began to ascend, the whole scene appeared covered with the cold robe of winter. All the higher parts of the mountains showed but one mass of snow; and every precipice under which we passed seemed crowned with an impending avalanche, which nothing but the black limbs of the gigantic pines, in which that region abounds, held from an instantaneous descent upon our heads.