During one of the maire's frequent visits to the cellar, I propounded a question to the schoolmaster which had puzzled me for some time: Was I to pay the maire? M. Rosset said that it was certainly not necessary, but I had better propose it, and I should then see how M. Métral took it. This I accordingly did, when the adieux in the house had been said, and my host was showing me the way to Thorens, where I was to sleep, he, also, declared that it was not necessary--the pleasure he had experienced in accompanying me had already fully recompensed him: still, if I wished to reimburse him for that which I had actually cost, he was a man reasonable, and in all cases content. I calculated that the dinner and wine which had fallen to my share would be dear at a franc, and the day's wage of a substitute to do the maire's neglected work could not come to much, so I boldly and unblushingly gave that great man four francs, and he said regretfully that it was more than enough. To his son and heir--the identical boy who had brought the ring of bread up the mountain to the chalet where we lunched. I gave something under two-pence, for guiding me across two doubtful fields into a beaten track, and he expressed himself as even more content than the maire. They both told me that it was impossible to miss the way; but I imagine that I achieved that impossibility, as I had to walk through two streams in the deepening twilight, and the prevailing fear of water in that region is very considerable.
The auberge at Thorens to which the maire had recommended me, as being the best, and kept by a personal friend of his, bore the sign à la Parfaite Union. The entry was by the kitchen, and through the steam and odour of onions, illuminated by one doubtful oil-lamp, I saw the guest-room filled with people in Sunday dress, while two fiddles played each its own tune in its own time. Nothing but the potent name of M. the Maire of Aviernoz gained me even a hearing; and, for a bed, I was obliged to stretch my intimacy with that exalted personage to the very furthest bounds of truth. Chappaz Nicolai, whose name the maire had written in my note-book, that there might be no mistake, appeared to be of that peculiar mental calibre which warrants Yorkshire peasants in describing a man as 'half-rocked,' or 'not plumb.' His wife, on the other hand, was one of those neat, gentle, sensible women, of whom one wonders how they ever came to marry such thick-lipped and blear-eyed men. Between them they informed me that if I did not object to share a room, I could be taken in; otherwise--maire or no maire--not. I asked whether they meant half a bed; but they said no, that would not be necessary at present; and I accepted the offered moiety of accommodation, as it was now seventeen hours since I had started in the morning, and I was not inclined to turn out in the dark to look for a whole room elsewhere.
The stairs were a sort of cross between a ladder and nothing, and when we reached the proposed room a large mastiff was in possession, who would not let us enter till the master was summoned to expel him. The furniture consisted of a table and five chairs, with no bed or beds. On the chairs were various articles of clothing, blouses and garments more profound, belonging probably to members of the party below; and on the table, a bottle of water and a soup-plate, the pitcher and basin of the house. It was a mere slip of a room, with two diamond-shaped holes in one wall, whose purpose I discovered when my guide opened a papered door, in which were the holes, and displayed two beds foot to foot in an alcove. One of these, she was sure, would be too short for me, but she feared I must be satisfied with it, as the other was much broader and would therefore hold the two messieurs. How the two? I asked, and was told that two pensionnaires lived in this room; but they were old friends, and for one night would sleep in the same bed to oblige monsieur. The ideas of length and breadth in connection with the beds were entirely driven from my head by the fact of their dirtiness; and I determined that if the two pensionnaires occupied the one, the other should be unoccupied.
After arranging things a little, I struggled down the steps again, and ordered coffee and bread in a little room, which commanded the assembly with the fiddles in the larger salle. The head waitress, busy as she was, found time to come now and then to an open window near where I sat, and talked to a male friend sitting outside in the dark: indeed, she did more than talk, and people had to rattle their glasses very hard before they could make her hear. From her I learned that this was a marriage party which had arrived; and when I asked why they did not dance, as the fiddles were engaged at that moment with unwonted unanimity upon dance-music, she gave me to understand that these were not people of Thorens, but only a party from another village, making the evening promenade after the wedding: from which it would seem that it is not the etiquette for people to dance under such circumstances, except in the home village. They sat round a table, men and women alternately, with their hats on, and with glasses before them. The bride and bridegroom were accommodated with a bench to themselves at the head of the table, he likewise with his hat on, and with a pipe in his mouth, which, seeing that he was a demonstrative bridegroom, one might have supposed to be an inconvenience. He managed very well, however, and every one seemed contented: indeed, the pipe must, I think, be held to be no difficulty; for the men all smoked, and yet, to judge from appearances, there was a prospect of as many marriages as there were couples in the room. The unruffled gravity, however, and the apparent want of zest, both in giving and receiving, which characterised the proceedings specially referred to, led me to suppose that it might be only a part of the etiquette, and so meant nothing serious.
Between ten and eleven the fiddles and the party vanished, and I went up-stairs more determined than ever not to touch a bed, after my experience of the room below. Three chairs were speedily arranged between the table and wall, and on these I lay and tried to sleep. But the very chairs were populous, as I had found below, and sleep was impossible. Moreover, soon after eleven, a soldier came into the room, to arrange about his breakfast with one of the maidens in the house. He had heard me order fresh butter for six o'clock, and he was anxious to know, whether, by breakfasting at five o'clock, he could get my butter. The chairs which formed my bed were under the lee of the table, so that the figure recumbent on them was invisible, and the gallant soldier, under the impression that there was no one in the room, enforced his arguments by other than conventional means. But military lips, when applied personally, proved to be a rhetoric as unsuccessful as military words. The maid was platonic, and something more than platonic; and the hero got so much the worst of it, that he gave up the battle, and changed the subject to a conscript in his charge, who had locked himself in his bed-room and would not answer. How was he to know whether he had the conscript safe? All this lasted some time; and when they were gone, one of the pensionnaires came in. With him I had to fight the battle of the window, which I had opened to its farthest extent. After he had got over the first surprise and shock of finding me on the chairs instead of in the bed, for whose comfort he vouched enthusiastically, he became confident that it was merely out of complaisance to him and his comrade that I had opened the window, and assured me that they really did not care for fresh air, even if they could feel the difference in the alcove, which he declared they could not. As soon as that was arranged to my satisfaction, the other pensionnaire came in, and with him the battle was fought with only half success, for he peremptorily closed one side of the window. He was a particularly noisy pensionnaire, and shied his boots into every corner of the room before they were posed to his satisfaction. As far as I could tell, the removal of the boots was the only washing and undressing either of them did; and then they arranged their candles in the alcove, lighted cigars, and got into bed. There the wretches sat up on end, smoking and talking vehemently, till sheer exhaustion came to my aid, and I fell asleep; but the edges of the rush-bottomed chairs speedily became so sharp that a recumbent posture ceased to be possible, and I sat dozing on one chair. A little before four o'clock, the noisier man got up to look for his boots; and as the friends continued their discussion, I also turned out and made for the nearest stream, where I bathed in a rapid at half-past four, to wash away, if possible, the horrors of the night.
CHAPTER XII.
THE GLACIÈRES OF THE BREZON, AND THE VALLEY OF REPOSOIR.
The bill à la Parfaite Union was as small as the accommodation at that auberge, and it was an immense relief to get away from the scene of my sufferings. The path to Bonneville lies for the earlier part of the way through pleasant scenery; and when the highest ground is reached, there is a lovely view of the Lake of Geneva, which may be enjoyed under the cool shade of a high hedge of trees, in the intervals of browsing upon wild strawberries. But after passing the curious old town of La Roche, two hours' walk from Thorens, the heat and dust of the dreary high road became insupportable; and no pedestrian who undertakes that march with a heavy knapsack, under a blazing noonday sun, will arrive at Bonneville without infinite thankfulness that he has got through it. The road is of the same character as that between Bonneville and Geneva, and that will sufficiently express its unpleasantness in baking times of drought.
The Glacière of the Brezon lies at no great distance from Bonneville--perhaps not more than four or five miles to the SE.--but its elevation is more than 4,000 feet, and the approach is steep. The Glacière of the Valley of Reposoir, a valley which falls into the main road between Bonneville and Chamouni at the village of Scionzier, is considerably higher, and a good deal of climbing is necessary in visiting it. When I arrived at Bonneville, the whole mass of mountains in which these caves lie was enveloped in thick dark clouds, and the faint roar of thunder reached our ears now and then, so that it seemed useless to attempt to penetrate into the high valleys. Moreover, I was due for an attempt upon Mont Blanc in the beginning of the next week, and an incipient bilious fever, with a painful lameness of one leg, warned me that my powers were coming to an end, and that another day such as the last had been would put a total stop upon the proposed ascent; and so I determined to take the fever and the leg to Geneva, and submit them to medical skill. This determination was strengthened by the exhortations of a Belgian, who called himself a grand amateurdes montagnes, on the strength of an ascent of the Môle and the Voiron, and in this character administered Alpine advice of that delightful description which one meets with in the coffee-rooms at Chamouni. This Belgian was the only other guest of the Hôtel des Balances; and his amiability was proof even against the inroads of some nameless species of vin mousseux, recommended to me by the waiter, which supplied mal-à-propos wine-sauce to the various dishes from which the Belgian was making his dinner, and did not leave his face and waistcoat free from stain. He had but one remark to make, however wild might be the assertions advanced from the English side of the table, 'Vous avez raison, monsieur, vous avez parfait-e-ment raison!' It is not quite satisfactory to hold the same sentiments, in every small particular, with a man who clips his hair down to a quarter of an inch, and eats haricots with his fingers; but it was impossible to find any subject on which he could be roused to dissentience. This phenomenon was explained afterwards, when he informed me that he was a flannel-merchant travelling with samples, and pointed out what was only too true, namely, that the English monsieur's coat was no longer fit to be called a coat.