One is so unused to see a mass like that of Mont Blanc without any snow that all my ideas and modes of estimating size were at fault.

I only felt overpowered by it, and that--as with the porch of Rouen Cathedral--look as I would, I could not _see_ it.

I had not mind enough to grasp it or meet it.

I tried in vain to fix some of its main features on my memory; then set the mules to graze again, and took my sketch-book, and marked the outlines--but where is the use of marking contours of a mass of endless--countless--fantastic rock--12,000 feet sheer above the valley?
Besides, one cannot have sharp sore-throat for twelve hours without its bringing on some slight feverishness; and the scorching Alpine sun to which we had been exposed without an instant's cessation from the height of the col till now--i.e., from half-past ten to three--had not mended the matter; my pulse was now beginning slightly to quicken and my head slightly to ache--and my impression of the scene is feverish and somewhat painful; I should think like yours of the valley of Sixt." So he finished his drawing, tramped down the valley after his mule, in dutiful fear of increasing his cold, and found Cormayeur crowded, only an attic _au quatrieme_ to be had.

After trying to doctor himself with gray pill, kali, and senna, Coutet cured his throat with an alum gargle, and they went over the Col Ferret.
The courier Pfister had been sent to meet him at Martigny, and bring latest news and personal report, on the strength of which several days passed without letters, but not without a remonstrance from headquarters.