IT. G1ULIETTA. 87 



the Saleve seems only like a dream, presently to end in 

 nothingness ; till, covered with dust, and feeling as if one 

 nover should be fit for anything any more, one staggers 

 down the hill to the Hotel des Eergues, and sees the 

 dirtied Rhone, with its new iron bridge, and the smoke 

 of a new factory exactly dividing the line of the aiguilles 

 of Chamouni. 



6. That is the journey as it is now, and as, for me, it 

 must be ; except on foot, since there is now no other way 

 of making it. But this was the way we used to manage 

 it in old days : 



Very early in Continental transits we had found out 

 that the family travelling carriage, taking much time 

 and ingenuity to load, needing at the least three, usually 

 four horses, and on Alpine passes six, not only jolted 

 and lagged painfully on bad roads, but was liable in every 

 way to more awkward discomfitures than lighter vehi- 

 cles ; getting itself jammed in archways, wrenched with 

 damage out of ruts, and involved in volleys of justifiable 

 reprobation among market stalls. So when we knew 

 better, my father and mother always had their own old- 

 fashioned light two-horse carriage to themselves, and I 

 had one made with any quantity of front and side 

 pockets for books and picked up stones ; and hung very 

 low, with a fixed side-step, which I could get off or on 

 with the horses at the trot ; and at any rise or fall of the 

 road, relieve them, and get my own walk, without troub- 

 ling the driver to think of me. 



