Some other remains, preserved from decomposition by the grape system, told me that the grapes were of a peculiar breed, highly medicinal in their nature, and that they were counted out and administered by the grape-doctors as methodically as if they were pills.  The new patient, if very feeble, began with one grape before breakfast, took three during breakfast, a couple between meals, five at luncheon, three in the afternoon, seven at dinner, four for supper, and part of a grape just before going to bed, by way of a general regulator.  The quantity was gradually and regularly increased, according to the needs and capacities of the patient, until by and by you would find him disposing of his one grape per second all the day long, and his regular barrel per day.

He said that men cured in this way, and enabled to discard the grape system, never afterward got over the habit of talking as if they were dictating to a slow amanuensis, because they always made a pause between each two words while they sucked the substance out of an imaginary grape.  He said these were tedious people to talk with.  He said that men who had been cured by the other process were easily distinguished from the rest of mankind because they always tilted their heads back, between every two words, and swallowed a swig of imaginary whey.  He said it was an impressive thing to observe two men, who had been cured by the two processes, engaged in conversation—­said their pauses and accompanying movements were so continuous and regular that a stranger would think himself in the presence of a couple of automatic machines.  One finds out a great many wonderful things, by traveling, if he stumbles upon the right person.

I did not remain long at the Kursaal; the music was good enough, but it seemed rather tame after the cyclone of that Arkansaw expert.  Besides, my adventurous spirit had conceived a formidable enterprise—­nothing less than a trip from Interlaken, by the Gemmi and Visp, clear to Zermatt, on foot!  So it was necessary to plan the details, and get ready for an early start.  The courier (this was not the one I have just been speaking of) thought that the portier of the hotel would be able to tell us how to find our way.  And so it turned out.  He showed us the whole thing, on a relief-map, and we could see our route, with all its elevations and depressions, its villages and its rivers, as clearly as if we were sailing over it in a balloon.  A relief-map is a great thing.  The portier also wrote down each day’s journey and the nightly hotel on a piece of paper, and made our course so plain that we should never be able to get lost without high-priced outside help.

I put the courier in the care of a gentleman who was going to Lausanne, and then we went to bed, after laying out the walking-costumes and putting them into condition for instant occupation in the morning.