Having communicated such information as he possessed, the man seemed to think he had a right to learn something in return, and administered various questions respecting customs which he believed to prevail in England.  He evidently did not credit the denial of the truth of what he had heard, nor yet the assertion, in answer to another question, that English hothouse grapes are three or four times as large as the ordinary grapes of France, and well-flavoured in at least a like proportion.  The roadside was planted with apple-trees, and these were overgrown with mistletoe; so, by way of correcting his idea that the English are a sad and gloomy people, I informed him of the use made of this parasite by young people in the country at Christmas-time.  Instead, however, of being thereby impressed with our national liveliness, he looked with a sort of supercilious contempt upon a people who could require the intervention or sanction of anything external in such a matter, and turned the conversation to some more worthy subject.

At length we passed into a pleasant valley, with thrushes singing, and much chirping of those smaller birds, in the murder of which, sitting, consists le sport in the eyes of many gentlemen of France.  Up to this point, nothing could have been more unlike the scenery which I had so far found to be associated with glacieres; but now the country became slightly more Jurane, and limestone precipices on a small scale rose up on either hand, decked with the corbel towers which result from the weathering of the rock.  It was the Jura in softer as well as smaller type, for all the desolate wildness which characterises the more rocky part of that range was gone, and there were no signs of the grand pine-scenery, or needle-foliage, as the Germans call it; the trees were all oak and ash and beech, and the rocks were much more neat and orderly, and of course less grand, than their contorted kindred farther south.  The valley speedily became very narrow, and a final bend brought us face-to-face with the buildings of the Abbaye de Grace-Dieu, striking from their position—­filling, as they do, the breadth of the valley,—­but in no way remarkable architecturally.  The journey had been so long that it was now ten o’clock; and as we were due in Besancon at five in the evening, we put the horse up as quickly as possible, in a shed provided by the Brothers, and set off on foot for the glaciere, half an hour distant.  About a mile and a half from the convent, the valley comes to an end, the rocks on the opposite sides approaching so close to each other as only to leave room for a large flour-mill, belonging to the Brothers, and for the escape-channel of the stream which works the mill.  This building is quite new, and might almost be taken for a fortification against inroads by the head of the valley, especially as the words Posuerunt me custodem appear on the face, applying, however, to an image of the Virgin, which presides over the establishment.  The monks