During one of the maire’s frequent visits to the cellar, I propounded a question to the schoolmaster which had puzzled me for some time:  Was I to pay the maire?  M. Rosset said that it was certainly not necessary, but I had better propose it, and I should then see how M. Metral took it.  This I accordingly did, when the adieux in the house had been said, and my host was showing me the way to Thorens, where I was to sleep, he, also, declared that it was not necessary—­the pleasure he had experienced in accompanying me had already fully recompensed him:  still, if I wished to reimburse him for that which I had actually cost, he was a man reasonable, and in all cases content.  I calculated that the dinner and wine which had fallen to my share would be dear at a franc, and the day’s wage of a substitute to do the maire’s neglected work could not come to much, so I boldly and unblushingly gave that great man four francs, and he said regretfully that it was more than enough.  To his son and heir—­the identical boy who had brought the ring of bread up the mountain to the chalet where we lunched.  I gave something under two-pence, for guiding me across two doubtful fields into a beaten track, and he expressed himself as even more content than the maire.  They both told me that it was impossible to miss the way; but I imagine that I achieved that impossibility, as I had to walk through two streams in the deepening twilight, and the prevailing fear of water in that region is very considerable.

The auberge at Thorens to which the maire had recommended me, as being the best, and kept by a personal friend of his, bore the sign a la Parfaite Union.  The entry was by the kitchen, and through the steam and odour of onions, illuminated by one doubtful oil-lamp, I saw the guest-room filled with people in Sunday dress, while two fiddles played each its own tune in its own time.  Nothing but the potent name of M. the Maire of Aviernoz gained me even a hearing; and, for a bed, I was obliged to stretch my intimacy with that exalted personage to the very furthest bounds of truth.  Chappaz Nicolai, whose name the maire had written in my note-book, that there might be no mistake, appeared to be of that peculiar mental calibre which warrants Yorkshire peasants in describing a man as ‘half-rocked,’ or ‘not plumb.’  His wife, on the other hand, was one of those neat, gentle, sensible women, of whom one wonders how they ever came to marry such thick-lipped and blear-eyed men.  Between them they informed me that if I did not object to share a room, I could be taken in; otherwise—­maire or no maire—­not.  I asked whether they meant half a bed; but they said no, that would not be necessary at present; and I accepted the offered moiety of accommodation, as it was now seventeen hours since I had started in the morning, and I was not inclined to turn out in the dark to look for a whole room elsewhere.