To mount—and to mount a wooded precipice with an invisible summit, after all the jolting and shaking of the long journey. Ermengarde at once decided that the only possible course was to lie down and die then and there. The woman of substance, on the other hand, with sound practical common sense demanded to be told what she was to mount, and was politely informed that she might take her choice, with a wave of the hand towards a string of mules and donkeys amiably blinking in the sunshine beneath a jutting rock, that was almost hidden in hanging drapery of sarsaparilla, honeysuckle, and bramble, and topped by pines and great bushes of white heath in flower.
"Mount them!" shrieked the poor lady, surveying the unconscious animals through her lorgnette. "Merciful Heavens!"
"But, one at a time, not all at once," the driver explained with gestures of deprecation.
"This is infamous!" thundered the fair-sized man, recovering from partial suffocation and upon the verge of apoplexy. "My wife's minimum weight is fourteen stone! Infamous! Besides, she can't ride. Atrocious!"
"Unless Madame prefers to mount on foot."
"Unfortunately," the thin man meekly put in, "there is no other alternative, the hotel being on the top of the ridge and accessible only by a mule-path."
"What?" cried another British matron of majestic girth, who was alighting with her daughter from a fly laden with luggage large and small. "No road to this place? It is a positive swindle. The people should be exposed at once. Besides, even if those wretched donkeys manage to carry us up, how on earth are we to get down again? And what is to be done with the luggage?"
"Mais," replied the driver, with a large circular sweep of both arms, obviously intended as a conclusive and satisfactory settlement of all difficulties.
"Abscheulich!" shrilled in Berlin accents from a plump and comfortable Frau, who had arrived upon the scene in another fiacre, containing a husband, a daughter, and a few other properties. "Undenkbar!"
At this the owner of the dark eyes, moustache and engaging smile looked with an expressive twinkle and shrug at Ermengarde (who was sufficiently refreshed and gladdened by the sight of the stout lady's difficulties to renounce her intention of lying down and dying for the present), and came forward with the explanation that the little climb was nothing; the animals were strong and accustomed to heavy burdens; the luggage would be carried by pack-mules, and the heavier passengers by the strongest of the saddle-mules; that no horsemanship was necessary; both donkeys and mules were to be regarded simply as ambulant easy-chairs, on which it was possible to doze and dream, to compose poetry, and evolve philosophic systems and scientific theories, "as Monsieur does," he added, gracefully indicating the thin man, who was lame, and having been hoisted on to the largest and most handsome of the engaging, soft-eyed donkeys, was reclining wearily with one arm on the velvet back of the saddle.