seemed to hear
the allegro movement after listening to the andante.

With each twist of our road the prospect changed. The mountains grew,
soared more abruptly, and the youthful-looking landscape smiled at
their strange shapes. As for the Cham Chaude, which had been the
Matterhorn at St. Pierre de Chartreuse, it now disguised itself for
some new part at every turn. Such lightning changes must have been
fatiguing, even for so extraordinarily versatile and clever a
mountain, for within fifteen minutes after playing it was the
Matterhorn, it was a giant, tonsured monk; a Greek soldier in a
helmet; a Dutch cheese; a hen, and a camel.

When Dragon Mercedes had rushed us up the great Col, and whirled round
a corner, suddenly a battalion of magnificent white warrior-mountains
sprang at us from an ambush of invisibility. Then, no sooner had they
struck awe to our hearts with their warlike majesty, than, repentant,
they turned into lovely white ladies, bidding us welcome to the rich,
ripe figs and purple grapes which they held in their generous laps. I
thought of Saint Elizabeth of Hungary with her fair face, her candid
sky-blue eyes, her high, noble bearing, and her white dress caught up,
heaped with the roses into which her loaves had been transformed. The
tallest, purest white mountain of all I chose for sweet Elizabeth, and
that was none other than far Mont Blanc, floating magically in pure
blue ether, like a gleaming pearl.

Flying down the perfect road towards the plain where two rivers met,
loved, and wedded, the valley which was the white mountain's lap
blended vague, soft greens and blues and purples, hinting of grapes
and figs clustering under leaves. Here and there a vine had been
nipped by early frosts and flung its crimson wreaths, like diadems of
rubies, in a red arch across distant billows of mountain snows.

Autumn was in the air, and though the grass and most of the trees kept
all their richness of summer greenery, a faint, pungent fragrance of
dying leaves and the smoke of bonfires came to one's nostrils with
the breeze. Mingled with the exciting scent of petrol, it was
delicious.

At the confluence of the newly married Drac and Isere rose the domes
and towers of stately old Grenoble, hoary with history; and never a
town had a nobler setting. Swooping down in half-circles, as if our
car had been a great bird of prey, we saw the valley veiled with a
silver haze, which wrapped the city in mystery, while thr