The hero of the song is an amorous pine, standing on the summit of a barren mountain of the north.

He is alone; he is weary; the snow and ice wrap him in a white mantle, and he spends his dreary hours of leisure in dreaming of a palm, which in days of yore he met, it seems, in his travels.
"M.

Larinski sang this little melody with so much pathos that the good abbe was touched, and I became anxious.

Anxiety, once felt, is apt to be constantly returning.

I asked myself if he had met his palm in the Engadine, and added aloud, rather dryly: 'Is the day of your departure definitely fixed?
will you not do us the favour of granting us a reprieve ?' "He executed the most pearly chromatic scale, and replied: 'Alas! madame, I am only deferring my departure on account of a letter that cannot be much longer delayed; in less than a week, I shall have the distress of bidding you farewell.' "'You shall not leave,' said Abbe Miollens, 'without letting us hear once again the poem of the pine.