Book The Second: Riches Chapter 1 Fellow Travellers

In the autumn of the year, Darkness and Night were creeping up to the
highest ridges of the Alps.

It was vintage time in the valleys on the Swiss side of the Pass of the
Great Saint Bernard, and along the banks of the Lake of Geneva.

The air there was charged with the scent of gathered grapes. Baskets,
troughs, and tubs of grapes stood in the dim village doorways, stopped
the steep and narrow village streets, and had been carrying all day
along the roads and lanes. Grapes, split and crushed under foot, lay
about everywhere.

The child carried in a sling by the laden peasant
woman toiling home, was quieted with picked-up grapes; the idiot sunning
his big goitre under the leaves of the wooden chalet by the way to the
Waterfall, sat Munching grapes; the breath of the cows and goats was
redolent of leaves and stalks of grapes; the company in every little
cabaret were eating, drinking, talking grapes. A pity that no ripe touch
of this generous abundance could be given to the thin, hard, stony wine,
which after all was made from the grapes!

The air had been warm and transparent through the whole of the bright
day. Shining metal spires and church-roofs, distant and rarely seen, had
sparkled in the view; and the snowy mountain-tops had been so clear that
unaccustomed eyes, cancelling the intervening country, and slighting
their rugged heights for something fabulous, would have measured them as
within a few hours easy reach. Mountain-peaks of great celebrity in the
valleys, whence no trace of their existence was visible sometimes for
months together, had been since morning plain and near in the blue sky.