Thus far successful, Morton next tried to learn something touching the country and the routes; but here his failure was signal. Where food and drink were the topics in hand, and especially when her wits were quickened by the sight of silver, she had contrived to understand him; but with matters more abstruse her faculties had never been trained to grapple. She showed, however, no lack of good-will, nodding, laughing, and answering, "_Si, si!_" to all his questions indiscriminately. With this he had to content himself. He bade her "_addio_," received a friendly nod and grin in return, and went on his way, much less bitter against mankind than he had been ten minutes before. CHAPTER XLVI. _Auf._ Your hand! Most welcome. _1 Serv._ Here's a strange alteration! _2 Serv._ By my hand, I had thought to have strucken him with a cudgel; and yet my mind gave me his clothes made a false report of him.--_Coriolanus_. In passing the Splugen, Morton journeyed chiefly in the night, making a wide detour over the crusted snow to avoid the station at the summit. By day, he found some safe retreat where he could rest and sleep in tolerable ease and warmth. His night progress was, for the most part, on a broad, clear road, very different from that rugged path by the Cardinel, where, some forty-seven years before, the avalanches cut through Macdonald's columns, and swept men and horses to bottomless ruin. The sky was still clouded; but there was a full moon behind the clouds, and the mountains reflected its light, from their vast surfaces of snow. He could hear any approaching foot from a great distance, for there was nothing to break the stillness but the hollow fall of torrents, and the whisper and moan of winds through ravines and gorges. On the third night, he was descending the defiles that lead from Campo Dolcino to Chiavenna. He passed Chiavenna, and soon a new scene opened upon him. The Alps were behind him, cliff and chasm, torrent and ravine, and the icy sheen of glaciers. Italy received him, robed in her "fatal gift of beauty;" in the midst of her shame, radiant as in her day of honor; breathing still of history, and art, and poetry. Standing on the heights behind Colico, he saw the Lake of Como stretching southward, its banks studded with villas, its hills green with the chestnut and the laurel, the fig, pomegranate, and vine. But, to the north, the sheer cliffs rose like a battlement, and, higher yet, towered cold white peaks, aloof in stern and lofty desolation.