“Ah!” gasped the senior officer, speaking the word high up in his mouth after the fashion of Frenchmen expressing supreme astonishment. “Que je vous aie mal jugé! I thought you were asking admittance to the night shelter.”
The shock of hearing one he had taken for a vagabond admit that he had money was clearly a unique experience in the sergeant’s constabulary career. He had by no means recovered when I turned away to the inn he had pointed out.
Three days later I boarded a steamer that zigzagged between the cities flanking blue Lac Léman, and descending at Villeneuve, set out along the valley of the upper Rhône. Here all was free and open as the mountains bordering the fertile strip, for the close-hedged fields of France are not to the taste of the Swiss peasant. No gendarme waylaid me at each hamlet; I had but to step off the highway to gather apples under the trees or to escape from the glaring sun.
Night overtook me at St. Maurice, a sure-footed mountain village, straddling the Rhône where it roars through a narrow gorge on its way to the lake beyond. Even within doors the villagers speak a high-pitched treble, so fixed has become the habit of raising their voices above the constant boom of the cataract. In my lodging directly above, the roaring intruded on my dreams, and in fancy I struggled against the rushing current that carried me down a sheer mountainside.
Church-bound peasants fell in with me along the route next morning, peasants lacking both the noisy gaiety of the French and the gloominess of the Sunday-clad German. Wayside wine-shops, or a pace too rapid for a day of rest cut short my acquaintance with each group, but I had not far to plod alone before the curiosity of a new band gave me companionship for another space.
At Martigny the highway bent with the river to the eastward; the mountain wall crowded more closely the narrow valley, pushing the road to the edge of the stream that mirrored the rugged peaks. Here and there a foot-hill boldly detached itself from the range, and taking its stand in the valley, drove off the route on a winding detour.
Two such hills gave Sion a form all its own. An ample Paradplatz in the foreground held back the jumble of houses tossed upon an undulating hillside. Back of the village, like gaunt sentinels guarding the valley of the upper Rhône, stood two towering rocks, the one crowned by the ruins of an ancient castle, the other by a crumbling church that gazed scornfully down on the jostling buildings of modern times. A Sunday festival was raging on the parade-ground. Around the booths and puppet-shows surged merry countrymen in gay attire; from the flanking shops hung streamers and the flags of many nations.
I had barely reached the town when a rumble of thunder sounded. Dense, black clouds, flying before a wind that did not reach us in the valley, appeared from the north, tearing themselves on the jagged peaks above. Close on the heels of the warning a storm broke in true Alpine fury. The festooned multitude broke madly for the shelter of the shops, the gaudy streamers and booths turned to drooping rags, the puppets humped their shoulders appealingly, and the parade-ground became a shallow lake that reflected a bright sun ten minutes after the first growl of thunder.
The oppressive heat tempered by the shower, I rounded the greater of the sentinel rocks and continued up the valley. Rolling vineyards stretched away on either hand to the brink of the river or the base of the enclosing mountains. A burning thirst assailed me. Almost unconsciously I paused and picked two clusters of plump grapes that hung over the stone coping of a field above the highway.
A stone’s throw ahead, two men stepped suddenly from behind a clump of bushes and strolled towards me.