Here, away from the world, the villages were quiet and obscure--left
behind. They had the same fascinating atmosphere of being forgotten,
left out of the world, that old English villages have. And buying apples
and cheese and bread in a little shop that sold everything and smelled
of everything, I felt at home again.
But climbing gradually higher, mile after mile, always between the
shadows of the high mountains, I was glad I did not live in the Alps.
The villages on the slopes, the people there, seemed, as if they _must_
gradually, bit by bit, slide down and tumble to the water-course, and be
rolled on away, away to the sea. Straggling, haphazard little villages
ledged on the slope, high up, beside their wet, green, hanging meadows,
with pine trees behind and the valley bottom far below, and rocks right
above, on both sides, seemed like little temporary squattings of outcast
people. It seemed impossible that they should persist there, with great
shadows wielded over them, like a menace, and gleams of brief sunshine,
like a window. There was a sense of momentariness and expectation. It
seemed as though some dramatic upheaval must take place, the mountains
fall down into their own shadows.
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