“You are right,” I said.  “They were his brothers.  One can fancy edelweiss growing freely on Mr. Gladstone.  His nature was of the white North.  You have hit it, Joseph.”

“But I do not see a thing that I have hit,” he replied, bewildered, glancing at the stout staff in his hand, and then at Finois, who had evidently not been brought up on blows.  It was then my turn to explain; and so we tossed back and forth the conversational shuttlecock, until I found myself losing straw by straw my load of homesickness, and becoming more buoyant of spirit in the muleteer’s society.

After the splendours of the Simplon it seemed to rue, as the windings of the Great St. Bernard Pass shut us farther and farther away from Martigny, that this was in comparison but a peaceful valley.  It was a cosey cleft among the mountains, with just room for the river to be frilled with green between its walls.  There was a look of homeliness about the sloping pastures, which slept in the sunshine, lulled by the song of the swift-flowing Dranse.

The name “Great St. Bernard” had conjured up hopes of rugged grandeur, which did not seem destined to be fulfilled, and at last I confided my disappointment to Joseph.  “If Monsieur will wait an all little hour, perhaps he will yet be surprised,” he answered, breaking into French.  “We have a long way to go, before we come to the best.”

We walked briskly, lunched at the dull village of Orsieres; and delaying as short a time as possible, pushed on—­indeed, we pushed on much farther than Joseph had expected, when he suggested our sleeping at Bourg St. Pierre.  “We might go higher,” said he, “before dark, but it would be late before we could reach the Hospice, and there is no place where we could rest for the night after St. Pierre, unless Monsieur would care to stop at the Cantine de Proz.”

“What is the Cantine de Proz?” I asked, trudging along the stony road, with my eyes held by a huge snow mountain which had suddenly loomed above the green shoulders of lesser hills, like a great white barrier across the world.

“The Cantine de Proz is but a house, nothing more, Monsieur, in the loneliest and wildest part of the Pass—­how lonely, and how wild, you cannot guess yet by what you have seen.  The people who keep the house are good folk, and they live there all the year round, even in winter, when the snow is at the second-story windows, and they must cut narrow paths, with tall white walls, before they can feed their cattle.  These people sell you a cup of coffee, or a glass of beer, or of liqueur, and they have a spare room, which is very clean.  If any traveller wishes to spend a night, they will make him as comfortable as they can.  One English gentleman came, and liked the place so well, that he stayed for months, and wrote a book, I have been told.  But it is desolate.  Perhaps Monsieur would think it too triste even for a night.  At St. Pierre there is at least a little life.  And the hotel ‘Au Dejeuner de Napoleon,’ I think it will amuse Monsieur.”