"I frequently resorted thither, ascending the first slope of the mountain, solitary, and enriched with flowers. I took with me a book, and yet I never read. The prospect was too absorbing. Whether the eye ranged afar over the level mirror of the lake, and the rocks of Meillerie, with their forests, meadows, and precipices; or hovered close at hand about the nest of Clarens and the low towers of Chillon; or, finally, returned to the pretty villas, with their green lattices, of our friends the physician and the pastor,[G] in whose company my husband laboured;--I remained there in a kind of dream, and my heart, deeply moved, felt the sweetness of a holy harmony. [Footnote G: It was our good fortune to reside, while at Montreux--the most beautiful spot on the wide earth--with a very estimable and rare individual, whom I should have thought of Italian or Spanish birth, if I had not known her to be a Genevese, and the sister of the able and enthusiastic historian of Geneva. Next door lived an eminent physician, of simple character, but all the more learned in natural studies.] "But soon I discovered that I was not utterly alone. Bees, or drones, which had also risen early, were already at work, seeking in the cups of the flowers the honey distilled beneath the dew, penetrating into the depths of the campanulas, or skilfully gliding into the mysterious corolla of the charming Venus's Slipper. Brilliant cicindelas opened the hunt after the gnats, while more unwieldy tribes sought their livelihood at the bottom of the herbage. "On this day, then, the 20th of July, allowing my glance to fall mechanically at my feet, and withdrawing my eyes for a moment from the too luminous picture, I saw with astonishment a scene which vividly contrasted with this attractive and holy spot,--an atrocious warlike struggle. The insect-giant which we call the stag-beetle, one of the largest of European species, a black shining mass, whose horns bristle with superb crescent-wise pincers, had seized upon a beetle of far inferior size. Nevertheless, the two enemies being equally provided with admirable defensive arms, after the fashion of the corselets, armlets, and cuisses of our ancient knights, the struggle was long and fierce. Both belonged to the murderous race which prey on little insects,--were powerful lords in the habit of devouring their vassals. Whichever had fallen victim in the fray, the Lilliputian people had certainly applauded. However, the blind instinctive movement which leads us, in such cases, to separate the combatants, induced me to interfere; and with the point of my umbrella, skilfully, delicately, and without wounding the two antagonists, I compelled the stronger of the two to release its grasp." * * * * *