to act as our guide. He was, unfortunately, more willing
than able; for his sojourn in the drinking-room had told upon his
powers of equilibrium. He asserted, as every one seemed in all cases
to assert, that neither rope nor axe was in any way necessary. When I
pressed the rope, he said that if monsieur was afraid he had better
not go; so we told the landlord privately that the man was rather too
drunk for a guide, and we must have another. The landlord thereupon
offered himself, at the suggestion of his wife, who seemed to be the
chief partner in the firm, and we were glad to accept his offer; while
the incapacitated man whom we had rejected acquiesced in the new
arrangement with a bow so little withering, and with such genuine
politeness, that, in spite of his over-much wine, he won my heart. The
landlord himself did not profess to know the glacieres; but he knew
the man who lived nearest to them, and proposed to lead us to his
friend's chalet, whence we should doubtless be able to find a guide.

We stole a few moments for an inspection of the Church of Arc, and
found, to our surprise, some very pleasing paintings in good repair, and
open sittings which looked unusually clean and neat. Then we crossed the
plain towards the north, and proceeded to grapple with a stiff path
through the woods which climb the first hills. It turned out that there
was no one available for our purpose in the chalet to which the landlord
led us; but a small child was despatched in search of the master or the
domestic, and returned before long with the latter individual, who
received the mistress's instruction respecting the route, and received
also an axe which I had begged in case of need. The accounts we had
heard of the glaciere or glacieres--every one declined to call them
caves--were so various, and the total denials of their existence so
many, that we quietly made up our minds to disappointment, and agreed
that what we had seen at the source of the Loue was quite sufficient to
repay us for the trouble we had taken; while the idea of a rapid raid
into France had something attractive in it, which more than
counterbalanced the old charms of Soleure. Besides, we found that we
were now in a good district for flowers, and the abundant _Gnaphalium
sylvaticum_ brought back to our minds many a delightful scramble in
glacier regions, where its lovely velvet kinsman the _pied-de-lion_
grows. On the broad top of the range of hills, covered with ri