Read "The Queen of Sheba and my Cousin the Colonel" by Thomas Bailey Aldrich online for free on Textopian. Full text with search, annotations, highlights, and AI-powered reading aids.
One morning in September, a month after all this, three persons, a lady / and two gentlemen, stood on the upper step of the Couronne hotel, / waving farewell with their handkerchiefs to a carriage which had just / started from the door and was gayly taking the road to St. / Gervais-les-Bains, on the way to Geneva.
A cool purple light stretched along the valley and reached up the / mountain side to where the eternal snows begin. The crown of Mont / Blanc, muffled in its scarf of cloud, was invisible. The old monarch / was in that disdainful mood which sometimes lasts him for months / together. From those perilous heights came down a breath that chilled / the air and tempered the sunshine falling upon Chamouni, now silent and / deserted, for the season was well-nigh over. With the birds, their / brothers, the summer tourists had flown southward at the rustling of / the first autumnal leaf. Here and there a guide leaned idly against a / post in front of one of the empty hotels. There was no other indication / of life in the main street save the little group we have mentioned / watching the departing carriage.