There was no disappointment when we had plunged into the silver haze, torn it apart, and entered the town over a dignified bridge.  All around us spread the city old and new; above, on the hills, were numerous chateaux, a strange fort, and the queerest of ancient convents, like the cork castles I had seen in shop windows and coveted as a child.  In the town there were statues, many statues—­statues everywhere and in honour of everybody.  Bayard was there, dying; and there was a delightfully human old fellow (humorous even in marble) who cleverly “lay low” till his worst enemy had finished an elaborately fortified castle, then promptly took it.  Not a spacious modern street that had not at least one magnificent old palace, a facade of joyous Renaissance invention, or at least a crumbling mediaeval doorway of divine beauty; and nothing of romance was lost because Grenoble makes gloves for all the world.

We sailed out of the town along the straight five-mile road to the Pont de Claix, and now it was ho! for the Basses Alpes, over a road which might have been engineered for an emperor’s motoring; past the quaint twin bridges spanning the stream side by side, which our guide-book taught us to recognise as one of the Seven Wonders (with capitals) of Dauphine.  Then came a valley, almost theatrical in its romantic grace.  One would not have believed in it for a moment if one had seen it first in a sketch.  Even the railway, on which we soon looked down, was inspired to gymnastic feats, leaping across chasms on giddy viaducts, and twisting back upon itself in corkscrew tunnels.  There were thrilling retrospective views away to the giant Alps we were leaving behind, but soon, nearer mountains crowded them out of sight.  The country grew wild, with a strange grimness, like the face of a blind Fate; cultivation ceased in despair of success; and alike on the bare uplands and in the deep-scored valleys there were few signs of human life.  Then, suddenly, in such a setting, we came upon the grandest of the Seven Marvels, the most wonderful lone rock in Europe, Mont Aiguille, more like an obelisk of incalculable immensity than a mountain.  Once, it had been considered unscalable, and might have remained virgin until this century of hardy climbers, had not Charles the Eighth had a fancy to hear (not to see!) what was on top.  Up went a few of his bravest satellites, hoisting themselves on to the aerial plateau by means of ropes and ladders, and bringing down wondrous tales of impossible chamois, savage, brilliant-coloured birds, and singular vegetation, which stories promptly went into all the geographies of the day and were believed until a more practical explorer named Jean Liotard climbed up, to please himself, in 1834.

We lost sight of this second Dauphine Marvel (the last one we were to see) just before running up the steep hill which led down again into the dark jaws of another mountain pass.  It was the Col de la Croix Haute; and once past this gateway of the Alps the landscape changed slowly and indefinably, here and there suggesting that we were drawing nearer to the south.  Though we were still encompassed on every side by mountains, they had lost their Alpine splendour of bearing; they stooped, or poked their chins.