My hand flew to my pocket, but paused, even as it grasped the water pistol.  The dog was small, the weapon large.  A fierce jet of water propelled from its muzzle might blow the breath from that tiny body, which my sole wish was to warn from under the wheels of Juggernaut.  However, he was persistent, and was in real danger, since to avoid an approaching cart, Jack was forced to steer perilously near the yapping beast.

I snatched the weapon, pulled the trigger, and—­a mild, mellifluous trickle which would have disgraced a toilet vaporiser sprayed forth.  Jack, Molly, and the peasants in the approaching cart burst into shouts of laughter.  The Spitz, undismayed by the gentle shower, which had spattered his nose with a drop or two, leaped at the weapon, and, irritated, I flung it at his head.  It fell innocuously in the road and our last sight of the Spitz was when, rejoined by his lizard friend, he industriously gnawed at the pistol, mistaking it for a bone, while the Dachs gratefully lapped up the water I had provided.  My surprise was a popular success, but not the kind of success which I had planned.  Jack said that he could have “told me so” if I had asked him, and I vowed in future to let dogs delight to bark and bite without interference from me.

The one inept remark which Shelley seems ever to have made was that “there is nothing to see in France.”  My opinion, as we spun along the road which would lead us to Lucerne and my waiting mule, was that there was almost too much to see, too much charm, too much beauty for the peace of mind of an imaginative traveller; there were so many valleys which one longed to explore, in which one felt one could be content without going farther, so many blue glimpses of mysterious mountains, veiled by the haze of dreamland, that one suffered a constant succession of acute pangs in thinking that one would probably never see them again, that one would need at least nine long lives if one were to spend, say, even a month in each place.

Molly advised me not to be a spendthrift of my emotions, at this stage of the journey, lest I should be a worn-out wreck before the grandest part came, but the idea of husbanding enthusiasm did not commend itself to me.  Why not enjoy this moment, instead of waiting until the moment after next?  It was too much like saving up one’s good clothes for “best,” a lower-middle-class habit which I have detested since the days when I howled for my smartest Lord Fauntleroy frills in the morning.

There were sweet villages where they made cheese, and where I could have been happy making it with Helen Blantock; there were chateaux with turret rooms where my book shelves would have fitted excellently; but always we fled on, on, until at last, after two bewildering, cinematographic days, we drove into the streets of that dignified and delightful city, Bern.

It had not been necessary for us to pass through Bern; it was, in fact, a few yards more or less out of the most direct path.  We chose this route simply and solely with the view of paying a visit to the Bears.  Molly had never met them; I had neglected them since childhood; Jack looked forward to the pleasure of introducing them to his wife.