The Country Doctor

"On a lovely spring morning in the year 1829, a man of fifty or
thereabouts was wending his way on horseback along the mountain road that leads
to a large village near the Grande Chartreuse. This village is the market town
of a populous canton that lies within the limits of a valley of some
considerable length. The melting of the snows had filled the boulder-strewn bed
of the torrent (often dry) that flows through this valley, which is closely shut
in between two parallel mountain barriers, above which the peaks of Savoy and of
Dauphine tower on every side."

- Excerpted from "The Country Doctor"