When Dragon Mercedes had rushed us up the great Col, and whirled round a corner, suddenly a battalion of magnificent white warrior-mountains sprang at us from an ambush of invisibility.  Then, no sooner had they struck awe to our hearts with their warlike majesty, than, repentant, they turned into lovely white ladies, bidding us welcome to the rich, ripe figs and purple grapes which they held in their generous laps.  I thought of Saint Elizabeth of Hungary with her fair face, her candid sky-blue eyes, her high, noble bearing, and her white dress caught up, heaped with the roses into which her loaves had been transformed.  The tallest, purest white mountain of all I chose for sweet Elizabeth, and that was none other than far Mont Blanc, floating magically in pure blue ether, like a gleaming pearl.

Flying down the perfect road towards the plain where two rivers met, loved, and wedded, the valley which was the white mountain’s lap blended vague, soft greens and blues and purples, hinting of grapes and figs clustering under leaves.  Here and there a vine had been nipped by early frosts and flung its crimson wreaths, like diadems of rubies, in a red arch across distant billows of mountain snows.

Autumn was in the air, and though the grass and most of the trees kept all their richness of summer greenery, a faint, pungent fragrance of dying leaves and the smoke of bonfires came to one’s nostrils with the breeze.  Mingled with the exciting scent of petrol, it was delicious.

At the confluence of the newly married Drac and Isere rose the domes and towers of stately old Grenoble, hoary with history; and never a town had a nobler setting.  Swooping down in half-circles, as if our car had been a great bird of prey, we saw the valley veiled with a silver haze, which wrapped the city in mystery, while through this gleaming gauze the two rivers threaded like strings of turquoise beads.

“How the Boy would have loved this!” I found myself exclaiming over my shoulder to Molly.  “He used often to talk of the great charm of descending from heights upon places, especially new-old places, which one has never seen before.”

“Used he?” echoed Molly.  “Why, that is rather odd.  It is exactly what Mercedes has just been saying.”

The Perpetual Mushroom moved impatiently.  I fancied by the movement of her shoulder that she resented having her thoughts passed on to me.  I hastened to turn away, sorry that I had reminded her inadvertently of my cumbersome existence; but I could not help wondering what she had been thinking of in the monastery when we had walked for full five moments side by side.