Florian waved that dainty Dresden china hand expansively once more over the landscape before him, as if it belonged to him. “Pardon me,” he said, sententiously; “in many things, I admit, the reality might be improved upon. The mountains, for example, should be higher, their forms more varied, their peaks more jagged, their sides more precipitous; the snow should drape them with more uniform white, regardless of the petty restrictions of gravity; the river should tear down far rockier ravines, in more visible cataracts. But Nature has sometimes her happy moments, too. And I call this one of them! Those women, now, so Millet-like in their patient toil—how sympathetic! how charming! A less primitive society, a less idyllic folk, would have imposed such burdens upon a horse or a donkey. The Tyrol knows better. It is more naïve, more picturesque—in one word, more original. It imposes them on the willing neck of beautiful woman!” “It’s terribly hard work for them,” Deverill answered, observing them with half a sigh. “For _them_? Ah, yes, I admit it, of course, poor souls!—but for _me_, my dear fellow—for _me_, just consider! It gives me a thrill of the intensest sensibility. In the first place, the picture is a beautiful one in itself—the figures, the baskets, the frame, the setting. In the second place, it suggests to the observant mind an Arcadian life, a true Dorian simplicity. In the third place—which is perhaps the most important of all—it affords me an opportunity for the luxury of sympathy. What is the trifling inconvenience of a heavy load on their backs to these poor ignorant creatures, compared with the refined and artistic pleasure—of an altruistic kind—which I derive from pitying them?” “Florian!” his friend said, surveying him comically from head to foot, “you really are _impayable_. It’s no use arguing with you; it only flatters you. You know very well in your heart you never mean a word of anything you say; so stop your nonsense and put yourself in marching order again. Let’s get on to Zell, and see what sort of quarters we can find in the village.”