“‘Twas ever thus, from childhood’s hour.’”

“But the landlord says there are dozens of mules at Martigny.”

“A mere mirage.”

“No, he has telephoned.  But you’ll look at the one here, I suppose, if only as a matter of form?  I think he’s outside now.”

“Let him be brought before me,” I said, with the air of a tyrant in a melodrama; and, by the way, I have always thought it would be very pleasant being a tyrant by profession, like Him of Syracuse, for instance.  You could do all the things you wanted to do, without consulting the convenience of anybody else, or having it on your conscience that you hadn’t.

At this moment Jack appeared.  It seemed that he had been putting the mule (the one available mule) through his paces, and the wretched fellow was laughing.  “It’s not funny, at all,” said I, thinking it was the situation which amused him.  But Jack explained that it wasn’t that.  “It’s the brute’s tail,” said he.  “When you see it, you’ll know what I mean.”

I did know, at sight.  The organ—­if a mule’s tail can be called an organ—­had mean proportions and a hideous activity which expressed to my mind a base and depraved nature.  Had there been no other of his kind on earth, I would still have refused to take this beast as my companion; and after a few moments’ feverish discussion, it was arranged that after all we must go through the Rhone Valley to-morrow to Martigny.

But the Rhone Valley, radiant in morning light, heaped coals of fire upon my head.  I had maligned perfection.  There was all the difference between the country between Brig and Martigny seen from a railway-carriage window, and seen from a motor car, that there is between the back of a woman’s head when she is giving you the cut direct, and her face when she is smiling on you.

The Rhone Valley tame!  The Rhone Valley monotonous!  It was poetry ready for the pen of Shelley, and a scene for the brush of Turner.  The little towns sleeping on the shoulders of the mountains, or rising turreted from hardy rocks bathed by the golden river; the peeps up cool lateral valleys to blue glaciers; the near green slopes and distant, waving seas of snowy splendour left a series of pictures in the mind; and best of all was Martigny’s tower pointing a slender finger skyward from its high hill.

Late in the afternoon, as the car whirled us into the garden of the Hotel Mont Blanc, we came face to face with two mules.  They had brought back a man and a girl from some excursion.  The landlord was at the door to receive his guests.  Jack, Molly, and I flung the same question at his head, at the same moment.  Was the situation as it had been when he telephoned?  Could I hire a mule and a man, not for a day or two, but for a long journey—­a journey half across the world if I liked?

The answer was that I might have five mules and five men for a journey all across the world if it were my pleasure.