All this morning he had been finding fault, straight along.  First it was with the mud.  He said, “It ain’t muddy in a Protestant canton when it rains.”  Then it was with the dogs:  “They don’t have those lop-eared dogs in a Protestant canton.”  Then it was with the roads:  “They don’t leave the roads to make themselves in a Protestant canton, the people make them—­and they make a road that is a road, too.”  Next it was the goats:  “You never see a goat shedding tears in a Protestant canton—­a goat, there, is one of the cheerfulest objects in nature.”  Next it was the chamois:  “You never see a Protestant chamois act like one of these —­they take a bite or two and go; but these fellows camp with you and stay.”  Then it was the guide-boards:  “In a Protestant canton you couldn’t get lost if you wanted to, but you never see a guide-board in a Catholic canton.”  Next, “You never see any flower-boxes in the windows, here—­never anything but now and then a cat—­a torpid one; but you take a Protestant canton:  windows perfectly lovely with flowers—­and as for cats, there’s just acres of them.  These folks in this canton leave a road to make itself, and then fine you three francs if you ‘trot’ over it —­as if a horse could trot over such a sarcasm of a road.”  Next about the goiter:  “They talk about goiter!—­I haven’t seen a goiter in this whole canton that I couldn’t put in a hat.”

He had growled at everything, but I judged it would puzzle him to find anything the matter with this majestic glacier.  I intimated as much; but he was ready, and said with surly discontent:  “You ought to see them in the Protestant cantons.”

This irritated me.  But I concealed the feeling, and asked: 

“What is the matter with this one?”

“Matter?  Why, it ain’t in any kind of condition.  They never take any care of a glacier here.  The moraine has been spilling gravel around it, and got it all dirty.”

“Why, man, they can’t help that.”

“They?  You’re right.  That is, they won’t.  They could if they wanted to.  You never see a speck of dirt on a Protestant glacier.  Look at the Rhone glacier.  It is fifteen miles long, and seven hundred feet think.  If this was a Protestant glacier you wouldn’t see it looking like this, I can tell you.”

“That is nonsense.  What would they do with it?”

“They would whitewash it.  They always do.”

I did not believe a word of this, but rather than have trouble I let it go; for it is a waste of breath to argue with a bigot.  I even doubted if the Rhone glacier was in a Protestant canton; but I did not know, so I could not make anything by contradicting a man who would probably put me down at once with manufactured evidence.