"Touet de Beuil!" said the guard gruffly, coming round to the carriage window. He was a man of few words, who appeared content to rely on the trumpet for any expression of his views or feelings.
"Oui, oui!" he confirmed irritably as I climbed out, slightly incredulous. "C'est ça—Touet de Beuil—V'là!" He jerked his thumb over his shoulder at the mountains which frowned above us; the horn blared forth a shrill note of defiance, and he swung himself on to the departing train.
I looked up to where he had indicated, and there, sure enough, perched crazily among pinnacles and buttresses of rock, was what appeared to be the stronghold of some medieval outlaw. I detected the brown roofs and quaint gables of a hamlet, apparently accessible to none but the eagles, yet boasting in this land of equality and fraternity a railway station of its own.
Footsteps approached me as I stood adjusting the straps of my knapsack, and one of the inhabitants hurried down the lane on to the platform. Childish though it may seem, I was frankly disappointed. The new arrival was a meek-looking little man dressed in black, wearing a bowler hat. In one hand he carried a gingham umbrella, and under his arm a buff-coloured hen of singular imperturbability. Now a brigand may wear a bowler hat; moreover, he may carry a chicken under his arm, and yet preserve an air of outlawry. But to descend from a mountain fastness that belonged by rights to the sixteenth century and brandish an umbrella at a departing train was carrying the incongruous a shade too far.
True, he swore roundly, as every good brigand should, at having missed the train. But I could not forgive him his gingham gamp.
A narrow gorge struck off into the mountains, and the path, skirting the torrent that thundered below, wound its way upwards. Limestone cliffs with ferns clinging to precarious footholds rose precipitously on either side, and high up, a thousand feet or more, the tops of trees showed up stark against the blue sky. To the brawling accompaniment of the stream I walked for an hour, when the gorge widened into a rock-strewn valley and I came in sight of an inn. In a rubbish-littered courtyard the proprietress was ministering to a stricken pony that lay buried beneath straw in the shelter of an outhouse: she turned at my approach.
I could lunch there—assuredly. She would prepare an omelette forthwith, and François could wait. François had broken his back somehow, and was, as far as I could gather from the lady's patois and the patient's appearance, in a baddish way.
The sound of our voices brought a travelling bag-man to the door. My arrival had evidently interrupted his déjeûner, and he courteously postponed its completion to stay in the sun and gossip while mine was being got ready. He was an Italian, and had come from somewhere across the frontier—I forget where—on foot. It was a long way, I remember.
He glanced at my discarded knapsack: "And monsieur is also on the road?" I explained that it was for pleasure, and his eye lit. "Just so—che comprende. And so a man may walk many a long mile, with the sun in his eyes and the wind on his cheek and the noise of running water at his side for company—is it not?" Something of a poet—or at all events a kindred soul, for all he ate garlic "to" his déjeûner and his visit to a barber was sadly over-due.
"And monsieur goes to Beuil? It is but fourteen kilometres: I have myself descended from there this morning. To climb Mounier? A brave adventure"—he flourished his wooden toothpick—"when one is strong, and young. Yes, the snow lies au sommet and the nights are cold là haut."