It took us an hour and a half to walk the eleven kilometres down to
St. Rhemy, where we lunched well, and drank a sparkling wine of the
country which may have been meretricious, but tasted good. There was a
_douane_, for we had now passed out of Switzerland into Italy, and my
mule-pack was examined with curiosity; but why I should have been
questioned with insistence as to whether I were concealing sausages, I
could not guess, unless a swashbuckling German princeling who married
into our family eight generations ago, was using my eyes for windows
at the time.
I need not have feared that the best of the journey would be over at
St. Rhemy, for the road (which broadened there, and became "navigable"
for motor cars as well as horse-drawn vehicles), wound down still
among stupendous mountains capped with snow, jagged peaks of dark
granite, and purple porphyry which glowed crimson in contrast with the
dazzling snow.
We did not leave St. Rhemy till long past one, and as we descended
upon lower levels the sun grew hot. More than once I called a halt,
and we had a delicious rest under a tree in some exquisite glade a
little removed from the roadside. It was during one of these, while
Finois cropped an indigestible branch, that Joseph opened his heart,
and told me his life's history. It had been more or less adventurous,
and it had held a tragedy, for Joseph had loved, and the fair had
jilted him on the eve of their marriage, for a prosperous baker.
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