On he pressed; higher and higher toward the sky. Walking, he thrust the end of his stick in the snow and watched the blue light follow it out of the hole it made. That he liked; and stood for long at a time to test the little optical phenomenon. It was a strange, a subtle colour, this greenish-blue; colour of the heights and deeps, ice-clear, yet holding shadow in its depths, mysteriously exquisite. It reminded him of the colour of certain eyes, whose shape and glance had spelled his destiny; eyes to which Herr Settembrini, from his humanistic height, had referred with contempt as “Tartar slits” and “wolf’s eyes”⁠—eyes seen long ago and then found again, the eyes of Pribislav Hippe and Clavdia Chauchat. “With pleasure,” he said aloud, in the profound stillness. “But don’t break it⁠— c’est à visser, tu sais. ” And his spirit heard behind him words of warning in a mellifluous tongue.