Joseph and Innocentina, who had been driving Finois and Souris, allowing Fanny to follow at will, had called a halt with the three animals, in a green dell where the way widened.  The muleteer had a handful of exquisite pink cyclamen, fragrant as violets, which he had been gathering from hidden nooks among the rocks, and he was in the act of presenting the flowers to Innocentina when we arrived, but she waved them aside, exclaiming at her young master’s pale face.

The Boy explained that there might have been an accident, owing to Fanny, and the donkey girl broke into violent abuse of the brown velvet creature who was her favourite.

“Daughter of a thrice-accursed mother, and of a despicable race!” she cried in her odd patois, which it was often better not to understand too well.  “Blighted and bloodthirsty beast!  But look at her now, eating with an enormous appetite a branch as big as herself.  Anaconda!  She would eat if the world burned.  If she had, with a stroke of her twenty times condemned hoof, hurled us all to death on the rocks below, she would still eat, not even looking over the cliff to see what had become of us.”

“But you should not talk so,” broke in Joseph, lover of animals.  “It was not the fault of the little ane that the stone was loosened.  How could she know?  It is you who are hard of heart, to turn upon her thus.  It is because you are Catholic, and believe that the beasts have no souls.”

“It is better to have none than to be a heretic, and the soul burn,” retorted Innocentina.  “I am not hard-hearted.  I love my young Monsieur, and would not see him injured, that is all; while you care for nothing in the world so much as your old Finois.  Ah, I would I had the insouciance of the anes.  It is after all that which keeps them young.”

At this we laughed, which annoyed Innocentina so much that she at once fed to the maligned Fanny a bunch of charming yellow-pink mushrooms which my prophetic soul told me had been originally intended for her master’s lunch.

Fortunately for us, Joseph—­sadly wearing in his buttonhole the despised cyclamen—­discovered a few more of these agreeable little vegetables, which he tested for our benefit by drawing his sturdy thumbnail along the stem, showing how the fluted undersurface flushed red at the touch, while the blood flowed carmine from the wound he made.

A short rest brought the colour back to the Boy’s lips, but we did not go on again until we had eaten some of the chicken sandwiches which had been put up for me at the hotel.  Climbing had made us hungry, although we had not been three hours on the way.  And we had left the summer behind, on lower levels; we did not need to remind ourselves now that it was autumn.  By noon we were en route again, but the brilliance of the day had gone.  As we looked back at the world we were leaving, serrated mountains were dark against flying silver clouds, and when we neared the Col, a fierce north wind, which had been lying in wait for us above, swooped down like a great bird of prey.  We had heard it shrieking from afar, but now we had penetrated into its very eyrie; and as we crept, like flies upon a wall, along the tiny path which merely roughened the sheer rock precipice, the wind caught and clawed us with savage glee.