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part occupation, and busy unpacking from their knapsacks a very complete assortment of traveller's medicines. Three awe-inspiring beds with sombre crimson draperies are ranged along one side of the great room, dimly lit up by a single window, and on the opposite side are heavy antique wardrobes in dark wood. On the snow just beneath the window, which looks out on the frozen lake and its girdle of snowy mountains, one of the famous Saint Bernard dogs lies stretched on his flank, his powerful limbs and massive head clearly outlined against the background of white, as he lazily surveys nature through one halfopened eye. But there is no rest for the dogs that day or the next. They are doomed to be tortured with kindness. A knot of fiends in the shape of peasant-boys come up to pat his head and run their fingers through his soft coat; and heaving a deep, half-human sigh the placid brute gathers himself up and, more in sorrow than in anger, shambles heavily away round an angle of the monastery. The passages in the basement story of the building are the favourite haunts of the dogs. They show a sneaking regard, too, for the kitchen and its precincts, where they prowl about ponderously through the gloom like bears in a bear-pit.

At six o'clock the bell calls us to dinner, and we all troop down hungry to the dining-hall, a handsome square room, pannelled and wainscotted, with tables ranged round two sides, a noble fire-place always on duty on the third, and a piano and harmonium on the fourth. About twenty of us sat down to dinner, and a motley company we were. There was a Cuban planter, English speaking, with his son and three daughters, half a dozen Englishmen, two Belgian newspaper editors, about seven Italians, and myself distinguished as sole representative of the Island of Saints. Blank disappointment overshadowed the faces of the strangers at that table, as they slowly made the discovery that, Thursday though it was, the day was a strict fast. It was rather trying to be baffled with rice-soup, maccaroni, salt ling, potatoes, toasted bread floating in sauce, and boiled rice with stewed prunes-this last item tantalisingly suggestive to some of us of Slender and hot meat; for general experience shows that within certain limits, say between sea-level and 10,000 feet above it, appetite varies directly as the altitude, and the Hospice of Saint Bernard, according to General Dufour, has an elevation of 8,120 feet. So conversation rather flagged at dinner. At my end of the table the dishes were criticised in murmurings, not loud but deep, the Cuban planter contributing the brief remark "slops!" and it was evident that not even the presence of three bishops at table-one from Mexico, another from Spain, and a third bearing the honoured name of Borromeo, was sufficient with some of the guests to atone for the meagre fare. Personally, I was quite satisfied with the dinner: it was plentiful, and excellently cooked and served, and, . looked on as a vegetarian meal, was a complete success. If the

brethren at the Hospice treat their guests thus on fast days, their entertainment on other days can leave little to find fault with.

There is no doubt that a large proportion of well-to-do visitors to Saint Bernard treat themselves to the free board and lodging which of right belongs only to the poor traveller. But in many cases, I believe this arises rather from ignorance than deliberate meanness; for in strolling round the lake after dinner with the two Italians who shared the treble-bedded room with me, I found them firmly possessed with the idea that the government subsidies to the Hospice were amply sufficient to pay all its expenses. A few statistics from Bædeker showed them their error; and they cheerfully agreed to drop into the poor-box with me, before starting in the morning, a sum equal to the ordinary hotel charges for a day. By the brethren at the Hospice themselves, not the faintest hint is dropped from which the ignorant traveller could infer the true state of their finances, and even the grave serving man recoils with horror from the most delicate suggestion of a gratuity.

At eight o'clock we all gathered again in the dining-room, and drawing our chairs in a wide circle round the blazing fire, pleasant at this height, though it was now the middle of August, we had excellent tea handed round to us-the first tea worthy of the name I had tasted since leaving London Bridge. Then one of the Cuban ladies sits down to the piano, and discourses some solemn music for us; the Morgue and its ghastly mummies (when will the brethren give them decent burial?) are discussed in undertones for a quarter of an hour, and at nine o'clock our candles are handed to us by the incorruptible servitor, as a gentle hint, and with a hearty good-night from the brother bursar, who treats us all through more as personal friends than chance sojourners, we disperse and flit silently up the stone stairs to our bed-rooms.

All is bustle at Saint Bernard next morning, the féte of the Assumption. Knots of peasants in holiday finery are sitting on the rocks around the Hospice, the handsome chapel is tightly packed with worshippers, groups of boys dog the dogs round the building and through its dim corridors, and the track northwards is dotted over with mountaineers toiling up from the villages in the Dranse valley. Charlet is in luck again to-day, for I have persuaded my Italian friends to engage him as guide and porter, across the Col Fenêtre back to Courmayeur. They set out at ten o'clock, Charlet leading gaily with his employers' knapsacks on his back, weighing together fully forty pounds. An hour later I shoulder my own pack once more, and taking leave of the brother clavandier, who smilingly presses me to wait for twelve o'clock dinner, with a promise of better treatment than he had given me the day before, I turn my back regretfully on the stern pile of the Hospice, and strike into the downward track for Martigny. The kindly hospi

tality of the monks of Saint Bernard, their never-failing courtesy, and their devotion to a life of humble servitude and patient continuance in well-doing, have won golden opinions from travellers of all creeds and nations, and the few hours I had spent in the Hospice gave me no reason to suspect, that the praises of the brethren have been in any way exaggerated.

An hour and a half from the Hospice brought me to the Cantine de Proz, a mountain inn where the Saint Bernard carriage-road ends; and here I secured a seat in a mule carriage to Martigny, with two Italians bound for the Bernese Oberland. Our mule is a good goer, and in little more than four hours, inclusive of a long halt at Liddes, takes us over the twenty-five miles from the cantine to Martigny. Bourg St. Pierre is reached at half past one, a mellow old place with narrow crooked streets, and a quaint church mouldering into dust for very age. Another half-hour, and we rattle over the rugged pavements of Liddes, and draw up at the Union, to bait ourselves and the mule. There is no work doing anywhere to-day. The men of Liddes sit smoking on their door-steps, trying to find happiness in idleness and Sunday clothes, and seeming for the most part inclined to give it up. The women, too, are all endimanchées; and wonderful to look at are the matrons here in Liddes to-day, and through the other bourgs in the Dranse valley, with their black silk ribbon head-dresses, shaped like crownless pot-hats cut down and bound round the top with gold lace. Orsières, with another mouldering old church, is reached about three o'clock, the valley growing richer and deeper and more finely wooded as we pass downward, the great cone of Mount Catogne grandly closing up the vista in front. Next comes Sembrancher, a charming old place, where apple-trees and pear-trees laden with fruit, break in through the groups of rich brown châlets in all directions. Sembrancher boasts of a few solid old stone houses, and on the lintels of some of them, pious latin texts are carved in Gothic characters. “INITIUM SAPIENTIÆ"... "The beginning of wisdom is the fear of the Lord," catches the eye, over the portal of one venerable mansion, the old schoolhouse, perhaps, where generations of Sembranchers, long since dead and gone, have trod the thorny paths of learning. Rattling out of Sembrancher, we run along the raging Dranse by splendid cliff and wood scenery, and plunge into the Gallerie de la Monnaie, where the road bores through the living rock for seventy yards. The Dranse is a rousing sight as it meets the eye here at the exit of the tunnel. Great boulders fallen from the cliffs overhanging the river block up the narrow channel, and lash the water into fury. Here a wave recoils from the sunken rocks, and makes a desperate leap up stream against the headlong current, there a large jet bounds clean out of the frothing chaos, and breaks into a shower of spray. The river seems to have gone mad for a space; but there is method in its madness,

for if you watch this seeming chaos of water you will soon discover a rhythmic succession in every jet and eddy and foaming breaker.

From this point on to Martigny the Dranse flows side by side with us, through a lovely valley rich in wood and vines and maize fields. When the ruined keep of La Batie comes in sight perched on its commanding height above Martigny, the sky gets overcast, and the thunder growls grandly far behind us. A storm is chasing us down the valley; but we may escape yet. Our driver lashes on the mule; we reach Martigny le Bourg before the storm; and, heedless of the local government decree, which prohibits trotting within the burg under severe penalties, we tear over the rough pavements at full speed on to the high-road for Martigny. Ten minutes more and we shall be safe: but it may not be. The thundercloud outruns the mule and breaks over us in a deluge of warm rain, and when I get down at the Hôtel de Mont Blanc in Martigny, at five o'clock, with the tour of Mont Blanc an accomplished fact, I am as thoroughly drenched as when I reached the "Crown" at Argentière nine days before.

It is just possible that some long-suffering reader, having tramped round Mont Blanc with me on paper from Martigny back again to Martigny, might be tempted some day to follow my footsteps in the flesh, when he pays his first visit to the "playground of Europe." To him I would address this parting word of warning: Don't follow my example unless you are prepared to sympathise largely with Nature in her sternest moods; for this route, taken as a whole, is marked rather by naked grandeur than by beauty, as that word is commonly understood,

THE END.

THE MAGISTER SENTENTIARUM AND HIS MOTHER.

HIGH peers and ladies stand beside

The simple rustic dame,

And bid her don full rich attire

To grace a nobler name.

"Your son," quoth they, "so long unseen,

Is prelate chief in Gaul,

Yet yearns to see his mother's face

Within the palace hall."

The Magister Sententiarum and his Mother.

"Ah! pray me not," she said with tears:

"I ne'er was bravely drest."

In vain she weeps, the lords are wroth,
She hearkens to their 'hest.

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* When Peter Lombard, the Master of the Sentences, had become Bishop of Paris, some gentlemen from his native place came to that city to pay him their respects, taking the Bishop's mother with them; and, as she was poor, they dressed her in the manner which they considered suitable for the mother of so great a prelate. The good woman let them do so, but said: "I know my son; this dress won't please him." Having reached Paris, they presented to the bishop his aged mother; but he, having looked at her, said: "That is not my mother, for I am the son of a poor woman;" and he turned his eyes away from her. "Alas!" said she to those who were with her, "I told you so, I told you I knew my son and his way of thinking. Give me back my own clothes, and he will know me!" Having put on again her peasant dress, she came back to her son, who cried out when he saw her: "Ah! there is my mother." And, rising from his seat, he embraced her tenderly and made her sit beside him.-" Rohrbacher's History of the Church," vol. xvi., p. 8.

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