GIULIETTA. 223 



on Alpine passes six, not only jolted and lagged painfully on 

 bad roads, but was liable in every way to more awkward dis- 

 comfitures than lighter vehicles ; 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 an} f rise or fall of the road, relieve them, and 

 get my own walk, without troubling the driver to think of me. 



7. Thus, leaving Paris in the bright spring morning, when 

 the Seine glittered gaily at Charenton, and the arbres de 

 Judee were mere pyramids of purple bloom round Villeneuve- 

 St. -Georges, one had an afternoon walk among the rocks of 

 Fontainebleau, and next day we got early into Sens, for new 

 lessons in its cathedral aisles, and the first saunter among the 

 budding vines of the coteaux. I finished my plate of the 

 Tower of Giotto, for the 'Seven Lamps,' in the old inn at 

 Sens, which Dickens has described in his wholly matchless 

 way in the last chapter of ' Mrs. Lirriper's Lodgings.' The 

 next day brought us to the oolite limestones at Mont Bard, 

 and we always spent the Sunday at the Bell in Dijon. Mon- 

 day, the drive of drives, through the village of Genlis, the 

 fortress of Auxonne, and up the hill to the vine-surrounded 

 town of Dole ; whence, behold at last the limitless ranges of 

 Jura, south and north, beyond the woody plain, and above 

 them the ' Derniers Eochers ' and the white square-set summit, 

 worshipped ever anew. Then at Poligny, the same afternoon, 

 we gathered the first milkwort for that year ; and on Tuesday, 

 at St. Laurent, the wild lily of the valley ; and on Wednesday, 

 at Morez, gentians. 



And on Thursday, the eighth or ninth day from Paris, days 

 all spent patiently and well, one saw from the gained height 

 of Jura, the great Alps unfold themselves in their chains and 

 wreaths of incredible crest and cloud. 



8. Unhappily, during all the earliest and usefullest years of 



