Twilight Hid All The Dirt, Cobwebs, And Tawdry Tinsel; Softened The Outlines, And Gave To The Immense Arches, Columns, And Stained Windows A Strange And Thrilling Beauty.

The distant tapers, seeming remoter than reality, the kneeling crowds, the heavy vesper chime, all combined to realize, H. said, her dreams of romance more perfectly than ever before.

We could not tear ourselves away. But the clash of the sexton's keys, as he smote them together, was the signal to be gone. One after another the tapers were extinguished. The kneeling figures rose; and shadowily we flitted forth, as from some gorgeous cave of grammarye.

Saturday, June 25. Lyons to Geneve. As this was our first experience in the diligence line, we noticed particularly every peculiarity. A diligence is a large, heavy, strongly-built, well-hung stage, consisting of five distinct departments, - coupe, berline, omnibus, banquette, and baggage top.

[Illustration: _of a diligence coach drawn by four horses._]

After setting up housekeeping in our berline, and putting all "to rights," the whips cracked, bells jingled, and away we thundered by the arrowy Rhone. I had had the idea that a diligence was a rickety, slow-moulded antediluvian nondescript, toiling patiently along over impassable roads at a snail's pace. Judge of my astonishment at finding it a full-blooded, vigorous monster, of unscrupulous railway momentum and imperturbable equipoise of mind.

Down the macadamized slopes we thundered at a prodigious pace; up the hills we trotted with six horses, three abreast; madly through the little towns we burst, like a whirlwind, crashing across the pebbled streets, and out upon the broad, smooth road again. Before we had well considered the fact that we were out of Lyons, we stopped to change horses. Done in a jiffy; and whoop, crick, crack, whack, rumble, bump, whirr, whisk, away we blazed, till, ere we knew it, another change, and another.

"Really, H.," said I, "this is not slow. The fact is, we are going ahead. _I_ call this travelling - never was so comfortable in my life."

"Nor I," quoth she. "And, besides, we are unwinding the Rhone all along."

And, sure enough, we were; ever and anon getting a glimpse of him spread mazily all abroad in some beautiful vale, like a midguard anaconda done in silver.

At Nantua, a sordid town, with a squalid inn, we dined, at two, deliciously, on a red shrimp soup; no, not soup, it was a _potage_; no, a stew; no, a creamy, unctuous mess, muss, or whatever you please to call it. Sancho Panza never ate his olla podrida with more relish. Success to mine host of the jolly inn of Nantua!

Then we thunderbolted along again, shot through a grim fortress, crossed a boundary line, and were in Switzerland. Vive Switzerland! land of Alps, glaciers, and freemen!

As evening drew on, a wind sprang up, and a storm seemed gathering on the Jura. The rain dashed against the panes of the berime, as we rode past the grim-faced monarch of the "misty shroud." A cold wind went sweeping by, and the Rhone was rushing far below, discernible only in the distance as a rivulet of flashing foam.

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