A series of exciting adventures that befell me four years ago were remarkable and puzzling. Until quite recently, I have regarded the mystery as impenetrable. Indeed, in this fin-de-siècle decade it is somewhat difficult to comprehend that such events could have occurred, or that the actors could have existed in real life.
I was in Piedmont, at the little village of Bardonnechia, a quaint, rural place comprising a few picturesque châlets, an inn, and a church with a bulgy spire, which nestles in the fertile valley at the foot of the towering, snow-capped Mont Cenis. I was staying at the inn, and I wished to go to Lanslebourg, on the opposite side of the mountain, intending to travel thence by diligence to Grenoble, where I had arranged to meet some friends. But I needed a guide. The by-paths in the Cottian Alps are rough and intricate, and he would be a daring spirit who would venture to cross the Cenis alone away from the beaten track.
There was not a single mule to be hired, and the only guide I could find refused to carry my valise, so I was in danger of missing my appointment. I could, of course, have gone by train through the tunnel to Modane, but that route would have taken me many miles out of my way, therefore I had decided upon the shorter road.
At evening, while I stood at dusk at the door of the inn, looking anxiously to see whether any guide or porter had returned from the mountains the innkeeper told me he had found a man.
“Does he come from the valley?” I asked.
“No, signore; from the mountains.”
“Impossible? I should have seen him. I have been watching the path for an hour.”
“This man does not follow the same path as the others.”
“Why?”
But my host vouchsafed no further explanation; he only called with a loud voice, “Giovanni!”