[Illustration:  “ACCOUTRED AS SHE IS, SHE PLUNGES IN.”]

There they talk together on the road, as we finally drive down the hill, their figures silhouetted against the sky.  They have been on the whole pleased and awakened by their adventure; they will discuss and compare their emotions, finger their silver, wonder and speculate, and go their separate ways, convinced anew that the ways of the world and its worldlings are verily strange and inscrutable.

III.

The noonday heat has now become noticeable, and seems greater on this easterly shoulder of the ridge.  We are grateful for the rapid downhill trot, which makes two breezes blow where one breeze blew before.  Even that one is less marked on this side of the col, and as we descend, turn by turn, beyond the limits of snow patches and into the zone of undergrowth and then of greener vegetation, the air grows perceptibly oppressive.  The view has wholly changed since leaving the crest.  The Ger and its associates have fallen from sight; their valley is gone, and we face a scene entirely new.  We climb again, to surmount the secondary col; and then commence the final descent.

It is now that the Route Thermale shows its mettle.  This section of the road was among the most difficult portions encountered by the engineers.  Nature stood off and refused all aid.  “Beyond is the valley,” she curtly told them; “between are the ravines; make what you can of them!”

A hopeless task it seemed.  But Nature reckoned without Louis Napoleon.  The road is here, serene and self-sufficient.  It literally carved its way down to the valley.  Slopes often greater than forty-five degrees have been cut into intrepidly; arches and viaducts thrown over gaping clefts, bridges over unbridgeable chasms.  The road turns on itself; it doubles and twists and dodges; it crawls midway along the ledges, gouges a path into the hill around a landslide’s groove, looks over uncomfortable brinks with easy unconcern, and in short outplays Nature at every point.  And all the while it continues wide and firm, and we trot ceaselessly downward with not one pause.  The parapets are less frequent than nearer Eaux Bonnes; often there is but a low line of heaped-up earth between us and the verge, and sometimes even this is wanting; but nowhere is the way too narrow for teams to pass, nowhere is there danger, save from a drunken driver or a thunderbolt.

We look back from the moving carriages, and the camera is pointed toward the ledge of road we have just traversed.  The picture proves an eloquent witness to all that can be said of the Route Thermale.[19]

[19] See Frontispiece.

Far below and in front, a patch of grey and brown has come into view; the drivers point out its clustering houses:  it is Arrens.  Many kilometres are traversed before that patch grows larger,—­more still, before we have curved and dropped at last down to its level and are speeding along on a straight line toward the village.  We find a ragged little street, and attract the usual waiting audience of Arcadians, and drawing up before the door of the inn are glad to escape for a time from the outside heat and glare.