“Well,” said I, as we got upon our way, “I trust you had an agreeable spell of rest?  The lady in the Riviera hat looked promising.  If her conversation matched her appearance, you were in luck, and well repaid for taking your refreshment out of doors.”

“Monsieur,” began Joseph, “have you in English a way of expressing in one word what a man feels when he is both shocked and astonished?”

“Flabbergasted might do, at a pinch,” I replied, after deliberation.

“Ah, the good word, ‘flabbergasta’!  It says much.  It is that I am flabbergasta by the young woman of the anes.  I was taken, I admit it, Monsieur, by her face, as was but natural.  And then I wished to find out, for the satisfaction of Monsieur and myself, how so strange a cavalcade came to arrive upon the St. Bernard Pass.

“I made myself polite.  I spoke with praise of the anes, and though my advances were coldly received at first, at the very moment I would in discouragement have ceased my efforts, the young woman changed her front, and seemed willing to talk.  She would not answer my questions, except to say that she was of Mentone, and that she had escorted the young gentleman who now employs her on several excursions, a year ago, when he was on the Riviera.  That he had sent for her and the two anes to join him by rail, though the expense was great, and that they were travelling for the young gentleman’s amusement, and his health, as he had had an illness which has left him still thin, and a little weak.  From what place he had come, or to what place they were bound, she would not say.  Her own name she told me, when I had asked twice over, but the young gentleman’s name she would not give, nor would she even say the country of his birth.  It was when I brought up this subject that the—­the——­”

“The flabbergasting began?”

“Precisely, Monsieur.  She abused me for my curiosity, and, oh, Monsieur, the words she used!  The profanities!  And at the same time her face as mild as a pigeon’s!  She taunted me with being a Protestant, as if it were a black crime which bred others.  Her name, if you would believe it, is Innocentina Palumbo—­Innocentina! But her tongue!  Monsieur, I listened as if I had been turned to stone.  And it was at this time that the young gentleman, of whom she had told me, came out of the inn.  He wished to walk, but Innocentina said that he was already too tired, and before he knew what was happening, she had him in the saddle on his ane.  So they went off, and where they will pass the night, their saints alone know, for it is all but certain that they will never get such animals as those even as far as the Cantine de Proz.”

“They were going in our direction, then?” I said.  “We shall pass them on the way presently.”

“I do not doubt it, Monsieur, though they had half an hour’s start.”

“Were the boy and the donkey-woman alone?  No tutor with them?”