At a short distance from his favourite village, rose the last branch of the Pennine Alps—a vast and towering chain of mountains; the highest peak of which, Monte Mucrone, overshadowed a gloomy little valley—shaggy with overhanging rocks, obscured by mists, bordered by awful precipices, and appearing at a distance to imbody all the horrors with which Dante and Virgil have invested the entrance to the infernal regions. But on drawing nearer to the defile, the impending rocks were found to be clefted with verdure; the precipices to be relieved by gentle slopes, where flowering shrubs afforded a beautiful ladder of vegetation, interspersed with natural bowers and thickets; while the mists, varying in hue according to the reflections of the sun, after becoming white, pink, or violet, evaporated altogether under the influence of the noontide radiance. It was then that, deep in the lovely valley, a lake of about five hundred feet in length became apparent, alimented by crystal springs, and giving rise to the little river called the Oroppa, which at some distance farther encircled and formed into an island one of the verdant hillocks of the valley, on which the piety of the inhabitants has erected, at great cost, and consecrated to the Holy Virgin, one of the most remarkable churches in the country. If the legend is to be believed, St. Eusebius himself, on his return from a pilgrimage to the Holy Land, deposited there a wooden statue of the Virgin, carved by a hand no less holy than that of St. Luke the Evangelist, which he was desirous of securing from the profanations of the Arians. [Illustration] In this sequestered vale, on the banks of this lonely lake, surrounded by the shrubby rocks and gentle precipices—in this church, and at the foot of the miraculous statue, did Giacomo Girardi dream away five years of his young existence—rejecting the adoration of his lovely bride for that of the wooden lady of Oroppa!