The wind rose during the night, and shook the windows: one pane in particular seemed set in unison to the gusts, and responded to them by a loud and melodious vibration. I rose and wedged it round with _sous_ and penny pieces, and thus quenched its untimely music. December 28th.--We were up before the dawn. Tairraz put my fire in order, and I then rose. The temperature of the room at a distance of eight feet from the fire was two degrees of Centigrade below zero; the lowest temperature outside was eleven degrees of Centigrade below zero,--not at all an excessive cold. The clouds indeed had, during the night, thrown vast diaphragms across the sky, and thus prevented the escape of the earth's heat into space. While my assistants were preparing breakfast I had time to inspect the glacier and its bounding heights. On looking up the Mer de Glace, the Grande Jorasse meets the view, rising in steep outline from the wall of cliffs which terminates the Glacier de Lechaud. Behind this steep ascending ridge, which is shown on the frontispiece, and upon it, a series of clouds had ranged themselves, stretching lightly along the ridge at some places, and at others collecting into ganglia. A string of rosettes was thus formed which were connected together by gauzy filaments. The portion of the heavens behind the ridge was near the domain of the rising sun, and when he cleared the horizon his red light fell upon the clouds, and ignited them to ruddy flames. Some of the lighter clouds doubled round the summit of the mountain, and swathed its black crags with a vestment of transparent red. The adjacent sky wore a strange and supernatural air; indeed there was something in the whole scene which baffled analysis, and the words of Tennyson rose to my lips as I gazed upon it:-- [Sidenote: A "ROSE OF DAWN." 1859.] "God made Himself an awful rose of dawn." I have spoken several times of the cloud-flag which the wind wafted from the summit of the Aiguille du Dru. On the present occasion this grand banner reached extraordinary dimensions. It was brindled in some places as if whipped into curds by the wind; but through these continuous streamers were drawn, which were bent into sinuosities resembling a waving flag at a mast-head. All this was now illuminated with the sun's red rays, which also fringed with fire the exposed edges and pinnacles both of the Aiguille du Dru and the Aiguille Verte. Thus rising out of the shade of the valley the mountains burned like a pair of torches, the flames of which were blown half a mile through the air. Soon afterwards the summits of the Aiguilles Rouges were illuminated, and day declared itself openly among the mountains. [Sidenote: THE STAKES FIXED. 1859.]