This honey you find at
every hotel in Switzerland, as one of the inevitables of the breakfast
or tea table.
Here we were to part from our Chamouni guides, and engage new ones to
take us to St. Bernard. I had become so fond of mine that it really
went quite to my heart; we had an affecting leave-taking in the dark
stone entry, at the foot of the staircase. In the earnestness of my
emotion I gave him all the change I had in my pocket, to buy
_souvenirs_ for his little folks at home, for you know I told you
we had compared notes on sundry domestic points. I really flattered
myself that I was doing something quite liberal; but this deceitful
Swiss coin! I found, when I came to tell C. about it, that the whole
stock only amounted to about twenty cents: like a great many things in
this world, it looked more than it was. The good man, however, seemed
as grateful as if I had done something, wished all sorts of happiness
to me and my children, and so we parted. Peace go with him in his
Chamouni cottage.
JOURNAL - (CONTINUED.)
Saturday, July 9. Rose in a blaze of glory. Rode five mortal hours in
a _char-a-banc_, sweltering under a burning sun. But in less than
ten minutes after we mounted the mules and struck into the gorge, the
ladies muffled themselves in thick shawls. We seemed to have passed,
almost in a moment, from the tropics into the frigid zone. A fur cloak
was suggested to me, but as it happened I was adequately calorified
without. Chancing to be the last in the file, my mule suddenly stopped
to eat.
"_Allez_, _allez_!" said I, twitching the bridle.
"I _won't_!" said he, as plainly as ears and legs could speak.
"_Allez_!" thundered I, jumping off and bestowing a kick upon his
ribs which made me suffer if it did not him.
"I _won't_!" said he, stuffily.
"Won't you?" said I, pursuing the same line of inductive argument,
with rhetorical flourishes of the bridle.
"Never!" he replied again, most mulishly.
"Then if words and kicks won't do," said I, "let us see what virtue
there is in stones;" and suiting the action to the word, I showered
him with fragments of granite, as from a catapult. At every concussion
he jumped and kicked, but kept his nose in the same relative position.
I redoubled the logical admonition; he jumped the more perceptibly;
finally, after an unusually affecting appeal from a piece of granite,
he fairly budged, and I seized the bridle to mount.
"Not at all," said he, wheeling round to his first position, like a
true proslavery demagogue.
