Laurence is at Geneva; he welcomes Carry, as he would welcome a sister. He is a noble fellow, and tells me much of his sweet Italian wife; and presents me to the smiling, blushing—Enrica! She has learned English now; she has found, she says, a better teacher, than ever I was. Yet she welcomes me warmly, as a sister might; and we talk of those old evenings by the blazing fire, and of the one-eyed _maestro_, as children long separated might talk of their school tasks and of their teachers. She can not tell me enough of her praises of Laurence, and of his noble heart. “You were good,” she says, “but Laurence is better.” Carry admires her soft brown hair, and her deep liquid eye, and wonders how I could ever have left Rome? —Do you indeed wonder—Carry? And together we go down into Savoy, to that marvelous valley, which lies under the shoulder of Mont Blanc; and we wander over the _Mer De Glace_, and pick alpine roses from the edge of the frowning glacier. We toil at nightfall up to the monastery of the Great St. Bernard, where the new forming ice crackles in the narrow foot-way, and the cold moon glistens over wastes of snow, and upon the windows of the dark Hospice. Again, we are among the granite heights, whose ledges are filled with ice, upon the Grimsel. The pond is dark and cold; the paths are slippery; the great glacier of the Aar sends down icy breezes, and the echoes ring from rock to rock, as if the ice-god answered. And yet we neither suffer nor fear. In the sweet valley of Meyringen, we part from Laurence: he goes northward, by Grindenwald, and Thun—thence to journey westward, and to make for the Roman girl a home beyond the ocean. Enrica bids me go on to Rome: she knows that Carry will love its soft warm air, its ruins, its pictures and temples, better than these cold valleys of Switzerland. And she gives me kind messages for her mother, and for Cesare; and should we be in Rome at the Easter season, she bids us remember her, when we listen to the _Miserere_, and when we see the great _Chiesa_ on fire, and when we saunter upon the Pincian hill—and remember, that it is her home. We follow them with our eyes, as they go up the steep height over which falls the white foam of the clattering Reichenbach; and they wave their hands toward us and disappear upon the little plateau which stretches toward the crystal Rosenlaui and the tall, still Engel-Horner. May the mountain angels guard them. As we journey on toward that wonderful pass of Splugen I recall, by the way, upon the heights and in the valleys, the spots where I lingered years before—here, I plucked a flower; there, I drank from that cold, yellow, glacier water; and here, upon some rock overlooking a stretch of broken mountains, hoary with their eternal frosts, I sat musing upon that very Future, which is with me now. But never, even when the ice-genii were most prodigal of their fancies to the wanderer, did I look for more joy, or a better angel.