By-and-bye, we came to a place where a grotto was “much recommended”; but swallows, southward bound, do not stop in their flight for grottos.  We darted by, thundered through the humming darkness of Napoleon’s tunnel, and flashed out into a startling landscape, as sensational as the country of the “Delectable Mountains” in “Pilgrim’s Progress.”  The cup-like valley was ringed in by mountains of astonishing shapes; it was nature posing for a picture by John Martin.  In the fields were dotted characteristic Dauphine houses, little elfin things with overhanging roofs like caps tied under their chins.

Soon, we raced into the main street of tiny Les Echelles, whence, in the good old days, fair Princess Beatrice of Savoie went away to wed with the famed Raymond of Provence.  We whisked through the village, and down the valley to St. Laurens du Pont, and the entrance to that great rift between mountains which leads to the monastery of the Grande Chartreuse.

As we plunged into the narrow jaws of the superb ravine, a wave of regret for the Boy swept over me.  He and I had talked of this day—­the day we should see the deserted monastery hidden among its mountains; now it had come, and we were parted.

The society of Jack and Molly and the motor car could make up for many things, but it could not stifle longings for the Little Pal.  Besides, magnificent as was Mercedes (the Dragon, not the Mushroom) I felt that Finois and Fanny-anny would have been more in keeping with the place.  I was too dispirited to care whether or no my eyes were filled with dust; therefore I had not goggled myself, and I think that Jack must have gathered something of my thoughts from my long face.

“How would you like to get out and walk here, like pilgrims of old?” he asked.  “It will be too much for the girls, but Gotteland will drive them up slowly, not to be too far in advance.  American girls, you’ll find, if you ever make a study of one or more of them, can do everything in the world except—­walk.  There they have to bow to English girls.”

“That’s because we’ve got smaller feet,” retorted Molly.  “Where an English girl can walk ten miles we can do only five, but it’s quite enough.  And we have such imaginations that we can sit in this automobile and fancy ourselves princesses on ambling palfreys.”

It was close to the deserted distillery of the famous liqueur that we parted company, the car, piled with our discarded great-coats, forging ahead up the historic path.  The little tramway that used to carry the cases of liqueur to the station at Fourvoirie was nearly obliterated by new-grown grass; the vast buildings stood empty.  Never again would the mellow Chartreuse verte and Chartreuse jaune he fragrantly distilled behind the high grey walls, for the makers were banished and scattered far abroad.