August 13.—After breakfast walked to St. Moritz to replenish the fisc. As English sovereigns were reckoned at twenty-five francs only—the Swiss Post-office allows twenty cents more per sovereign on money orders from England—I did not understand, nor have I since learnt, why I was asked to pay for the transaction the little commission of two francs and a half.

Having returned to Pontresina I went to the Post bureau to despatch some heavy luggage to Lausanne. In the middle of the business, while the clerk was engaged in weighing the pieces, a German pushed his way through the crowd, and interrupting the business in hand, without a word of apology, took possession of the clerk. I once saw at Interlaken another gentleman of the same nationality act in precisely the same fashion. The action exactly corresponded—the comparison must be excused for the sake of its illustrative aptness—to that of a pig, who having come up to the feeding-trough a little late, instantly knocks aside those who are already in possession, and setting his forefeet in the dish, gulps down all he can. The German pig, however, goes further than this, for he plants himself lengthways in the narrow dish, so that the first comers who have been knocked aside, can have no more till he is satisfied. On both of these occasions the clerk submitted without remonstrance. I have also seen managers of hotels accept with equal meekness German animadversions long and loud on items in their bills, which I cannot but suppose they would have resented had they come from Frenchmen or Englishmen. Why this difference? Is it because the Swiss are used to this kind of Tudesque violence? Has much experience taught them at last that there is nothing for it but to wait till the storm has exhausted itself? Or is it because they are afraid of it? And, then, of these barbarians; as all the world knows that Germans are for the most part easy, good-natured, reasonable people, to what class do they belong? Are they junkers? Or are they specimens of the Allemanic variety of the nouveaux riches? Do they belong to the shopocracy, or to the Bureaucracy, or to the barrack? Do they come from Berlin, or from the Hercynian Forest?

This was my last day at Pontresina. My little guide had now to return to the college of Lausanne, where he would have to put in his appearance on the 15th. It was now the 13th. He, therefore, and his mother, must leave to-night by the 4 A.M. diligence. I would join them at Lausanne, but at present it was too soon for me to return; and so I determined to go by some cross-country way to the Stelvio and to the Ortler; and when I had reached Trafoi to think about where I would go next. My own idea for the start was to take the lakes Nero and Bianco on the way to Poschiavo; and then by Val di Campo, and Val Viola, to get to Bormio. But Christian Grass, a name well known in Pontresina, whom I had engaged to accompany me, was quite sure that I should find more to interest me if I went by the way of the Stretta to Livigno, and thence over M. della Neve, and by Isolaccia, to Bormio. I was easily persuaded, for so that we went I cared little what way we went. I knew we could not go a bad way. His advice was, that I should send on my sac to the Bernina House, by the Post this afternoon, and walk there in the evening; and then, at 6 A.M. to-morrow, by which hour he would himself, having slept at home, arrive from Pontresina, start for Livigno. As this was what I had myself thought would be best, so soon as the Livigno route had been decided on, I showed my confidence in him by telling him I would act on his advice.

About an hour before dark I reached the Bernina House. There is a bit of wet ground, three or four acres in extent, between the House and the Bernina Bach. It is completely levelled for cutting; but, as it is swampy, it grows hardly anything but the large-leafed dock, and other kinds of marsh-weeds. Still its produce is of much use in a country where there is no straw for littering cows, and horses. I now found in it a gang of ten men at work, cutting the weeds. Those who in these parts mow for wages, are generally Italians; the native men being employed on their own land, and in waiting in one way or another on travellers; or, which comprises a considerable proportion of the young men, have gone abroad for a time to seek their fortune. The pay of these itinerant haymakers, was, I found, two francs, seventy cents a day. As they live almost exclusively on polenta, they are able to save the greater part of their wages. I asked one of them what they did in winter. ‘We go home,’ he replied, ‘and sleep like the marmots.’

A heavy shower drove me from the field into the house for the rest of the evening, for it soon became continuous rain without any intermission of the patter against the window. Under these circumstances, the landlady, who was also a not inconsiderable landlord proved a host as well as an obliging hostess. She was never long together out of the room, always having something fresh to tell about herself, the people, the country, the summer and winter traffic of the road, or something or other. The House is her own property. She has also between thirty and forty thousand klafters of prairie, or grass land levelled and irrigated for mowing, and fourteen cows. Fourteen hundred klafters are about equal to an English acre. I have already mentioned, as we found yesterday, that the good woman treats her guests well in respect both of what she gives them, and of what she takes from them. The bedrooms, of which there are six, are small but clean. They are over the stabling, on the opposite side of the way.

August 14.—It rained all night. At 6 A.M. Christian Grass, true to time, arrived. At 10.15 the rain having subsided to a drizzle, we started for Livigno. Our road lay up the Heuthal. We had been out half an hour when the sun finished off the attenuating clouds, and we had a most charming day for our walk. The marmots before us, and right and left of us on the mountain sides, had come out from their earths to salute, in their fashion, the return of ‘the God of gladness.’ Their sharp short cries we heard all around us. ‘That,’ said Christian, ‘is the barometer of fine weather; as the descent of the chamois from the mountain tops is of a coming storm.’ Who would not have thought well of the man who put local observation in such a form?

If one can be pleased with a long treeless valley, marvellously full of flowers (though, indeed, they abound more on the high flanks than in the bottom, where the path lies), and with mountains that are neither covered with snow, nor very rugged, he will be more than satisfied with his five miles’ walk through the Heuthal. All throughout it that admits of being mown is assigned in lots to the burgers of Pontresina, for hay-making: the rest is good Alpine summer pasture. Of course, as in every Swiss valley, the music of a hurrying stream accompanies you all the way. Near the further end of it, you come on a little shallow tarn. ‘What,’ you ask, ‘has created this tarn in this place?’ Something must have excavated it. It seems itself to put the question to you; ‘can you tell how I came here?’ As I looked up to the mountain that overhung it, that seemed to give the answer. From its top down to the little tarn there was a steep side, in fact an unchecked slide, if reckoned vertically, of 2,000 feet. What enormous masses, then, of snow, must at times, probably every year, drop down to this very spot! Their momentum must be suddenly checked, and expended, just where the little tarn is. The expenditure of such a force must have an effect. The little tarn is the effect. Whatever in the soil is compressible must be compressed, and whatever is expressible must be driven out, by the blow. This is what the mountain seemed to say in explanation of the existence of the tarn. ‘It is my work,’ quoth the mountain; ‘I excavated it.’

A little beyond the tarn, and on the same level with it, you suddenly, without any preparation, find yourself on the top of a lofty mountain, with a deep valley at your feet. In fact for the last five miles you have been walking up the western declivity of this mountain, without perceiving it, or giving it a thought, and latterly, without being aware of it, you have been walking on its summit; and now in a moment, you come to the brow of the summit, and the eastern side of the mountain, all but, as it seems to you now you are looking down, a mountain-deep precipice, is at your feet. One step more you think would roll you down to the bottom of it. You slept last night at a height of 6,735 feet. You are now on the summit of the Pass, at a height of 8,143 feet. So gradual, through your five miles’ walk up the valley, has been your ascent. The peaks right and left of you are 2,000 feet higher, and the sight of them had assisted in keeping the true character of your position out of your thoughts. There in the deep valley of the Spöl below you, into which you now have to descend, lies your way to Livigno. The valley is at right angles to what has hitherto been the direction of your path.

Having got down to the valley we selected a halting place just above the stream of the Spöl, and below the brow of its bank. Here we were in the sun, but out of the wind; and having seated ourselves on the turf, with rocks for footstools, we spent three-quarters of an hour about what we called our dinner. We had breakfasted early, and had walked just enough to make us hungry. It was a very pleasant three-quarters of an hour. There was the bright, warm sun, the pleasant sensations of its brightness and warmth enhanced by the recollection of the cold, wet morning; there was the green valley before us, with a herd of cows grazing near, and a party of salt carriers returning with their asses to Poschiavo; there were the naked drab-coloured mountain-tops, three, or more, thousand feet above us; there was the motion and the music of the lively crystal stream, as it hurried by over its rocky channel at our feet, near enough to enable us to dip from it without rising, what we wanted for diluting and cooling our wine, that we might take it in long draughts; and then there was for me the conversation of a companion, who I knew was intelligent, and who also, I had every reason to believe, was a man of good faith.

One source of pleasure in such a three-quarters of an hour is the perception of its difference from your ordinary life. There is a present sense of the long thread that connects you with home. What is around and before you is not all that is at the moment in the mind’s eye. Even the seas, the lands, the cities, the mountains that lie between are not altogether lost to view. The images it may be of your East Anglian Vicarage, and of all that you have lately seen between it and this charming little halting place below the brow of the bank, and just above the stream, of the Spöl, are recalled to mind. That within you which thinks and feels is quickened into its own proper life. The sense of life is the conscious enjoyment of the powers of life. And here, as you sit at rest on this sunny fresh-aired bank with so many senses of body and of mind so pleasantly appealed to, you have the sense of life abundantly—the sense of a living mind in a living body.

The rest of our way was along a gentle, almost unobserved descent; at times, as we passed along the silted-up beds of old lakelets, quite on a level. The rounded tops of most of the contiguous mountains showed where the materials had come from to fill up the lakelets. You see in thought the steps of the process; the frost disintegrating the summits, and the torrents from rain, and from melting snow, bringing the particles and pieces down to the lakelets; and then you see man appearing on the scene, and toiling through the short summer in burying and removing the fragments of rock that strewed the surface, and levelling all with what soil he could find, to make a bed for the carpet of turf over which you are walking, and upon which you see that all the life in the detached châlets and hamlets you are passing, ultimately rests: for here, that is the one means of supporting life.

The valley down to Livigno is generally broad and verdant. At 4 P.M. we reached Livigno. It is a large scattered village, perhaps a mile and a half long. Its houses are old, or at all events most of them have the appearance of age, for the cembra timber of which they are built after some years of exposure weathers to a rich black. This the people call sun-burning. The place has three or four churches. On a blocked-up window of one of these, I counted six tiers of swallow’s nests. I saw here no gnats or musquitoes. This numerous colony, therefore, must be supported chiefly by the house-fly. The reason why there are so many house-flies here, and elsewhere in Switzerland, is that there are so many landed proprietors. The valley is broad, and is divided into little estates, each just big enough to support a single family. The land can only be turned to account through cows. Every house, therefore, in the long village has a manure heap at, or beside, its door. These manure heaps, one for each house, are coverts and preserves for breeding flies. If this part of the valley was in a single property, there would be but one fly-preserve; as things now are, there is a series of them a mile and a half long. The chain, then, of conditions is as follows; a broad grassy valley at an altitude of more than 6,000 feet; this is divided into small properties; each of these is devoted exclusively to the support of cows; the manure from each byre, for the eight months the cows are under cover, is heaped up at the door; these heaps are left festering in the sun throughout the summer, for the land, the hay not yet having been made, is not yet ready for the manure, and the people are too busy to remove it; in these heaps, innumerable flies are bred, these flies feed the martins that build on the blocked-up church window nests six tiers deep. If the whole valley were put into a few cheese farms, the reduction in the number of flies, and so in the number of martins, would correspond to the reduction in the number of proprietors. The number of flies is in correlation to the size of the landed properties.

The only attempt that I saw had been made in Livigno to grow anything except grass was that by the side of some half dozen houses in the village in little enclosures of a few yards square, white turnips and white-leafed beet had been sown. But in the middle of August, the former had no tubers, and the latter were very stunted. Some of the mountains right and left of the village, a little below it, have a peculiarity: those in the second range appear to have mountains of black rock placed on the top of what may be called the original mountain, in shape somewhat like the naves of titanic cathedrals without towers. One of these superimposed masses on the left is especially well formed and grand.

It was 4 P.M. when we reached the inn. An hour afterwards, the rain of the early morning returned. It soon, as the temperature continued to fall, changed into snow, which continued for thirty hours. This was a severe test of the resources of the place. I had heard that it was celebrated for trout. One might of one’s self have supposed this, for we had for the last 9 miles been walking by the side of a stream, the water of which was nowhere too broken for fish. Of course, therefore, we ordered trout for our supper, which was to be served at 6 o’clock. The little inn has two little parlours. In each of these we found a party of card-players. The two parties were forthwith placed in a single room, that the other might be appropriated to the visitors. These card-players were elderly men, they represented the class who had in their younger days sought fortune in foreign cities, and in the degrees which satisfied them had found what they sought. They had now returned to Livigno to live on meagre cheese, mummy beef when a great occasion justified such an indulgence, and black bread, with a trout or two I suppose now and then; to be regarded as the aristocracy of the place; to spend a large proportion of their evenings in playing at cards for schnapps, and to lay their bones in the God’s acre of one of the four above-mentioned churches. As we stood at the door of the inn, looking at the falling snow, and not forgetting that it was the middle of August, I asked one of these elders, ‘What, when he might have lived in comfort elsewhere, had induced him to return to such a place?’ His reply was, ‘The memory of one’s parents is a beautiful thing.’ I felt ashamed of my question. I was rebuked, humiliated, and silent. In a moment his sentiment so natural, or if not, then something much better, so human, or again if not, then something much better, so tender, so pleasing, was confronted by the recollection of the brutality of the English wife-beater. What, I thought, can account for this world-wide difference? Why is this peasant’s mind in this wretched Alpine recess a smiling garden, while had his lot been cast in smiling England it might have been a howling, outrageous wilderness? Can, I asked myself, can in the one case the general diffusion of property, the great educator, and the absence of it in the other, lead, through their natural consequences, and effects, to these two so widely opposite states of mind? Is this at the root of the difference?

As there was no going outside the door, and as the room assigned to us was, now that the snow had been falling some time, uncomfortably cold, I went into the kitchen for warmth, for company, and for something to see. The arrangements of the ground floor of the inn were as follows: the front door by which you entered, opened, throughout the day it was never closed, upon a hall about 25 feet long, and 18 wide. On the right of this were the two parlours; they were small square rooms, each with a small square window, which had, as is usual in Grison châlets, a strong family resemblance to an embrasure, the object of this unusual diminutiveness and peculiarity of form being to keep out the cold. On the walls were a few coloured prints on religious subjects, and a few photographs of friends and relatives. Of these two parlours the one nearest the front door was assigned to us, the other to the card-players. Opposite to our parlour was a small room without a window, strongly fortified against frost. In this was sunk the well, which in winter was the only source to the house for its supply of water. Opposite the other parlour was the door of the cellar. Next to the hall, this was the largest room in the house. It was somewhat sunk in the ground, and by placing the cow-house against it, and by other devices, all available means for keeping out the frost had been resorted to. It contained many vats, hogsheads, and barrels of various sizes, which are replenished each year, while the roads are still passable, or so soon as they become passable, but while there is no probability of the occurrence of some of the few hot days of a Grison summer. The hall has no window, and receives all its light from the front door, which must therefore be left open except in very severe weather, and from the embrasures of the two parlours. Against the wall of the hall, between the doors of the two parlours, stood a table, on which were two or three black bottles accompanied by some little glasses. This was the provision for supplying the villagers with schnapps of distilled drinks. Opposite to this table, against the opposite wall, between the doors of the pump-room and of the cellar, was another table, on which also were black bottles, but accompanied with small tumblers. This was the provision for those who preferred Valtelline wine to distilled schnapps. At the further end of the hall was, on the right, the staircase to the bedroom floor; and to the left of that, the entrance to the kitchen.

The kitchen had but one window, and that, again, as it was in the embrasure style, admitted a very insufficient amount of light, and that insufficiency was minimized by the blackness with which nearly a century of smoke had stained the ceiling and walls: for in these wooden interiors whitewashing is unknown. On a high stool on the right side of the fire, in the chimney corner, sat the aged father of our host. His hair was long, and as white as the snow that was falling. He wore a kind of full dress, a swallow-tailed coat, and knee-breeches, I suppose to indicate that he no longer made any pretence to do any kind of work. In front of the fire was the burly wife of our host, preparing the coffee, and frying the fish. The fuel used was the wood of the cembra. This is so full of turpentine, that no sooner does a chip of it touch the fire than it bursts into flame. It was by the aid of these chips that the good woman from time to time ascertained whether the milk was burning, the coffee had come to the boiling point, and the fish were frying to her satisfaction. Supposing that her visitor had come to see how things were done at Livigno, she took a large chip, and having touched the fire with it, held it up before me in a blaze of pure white flame, and said, ‘Behold a Livigno candle.’ ‘Thanks, Signora,’ quoth the visitor, ‘I see that bountiful nature has well supplied your wants.’ All the while the landlord, when not summoned to the hall to pour out a glass of schnapps—the wine to-day was seldom called for: it was too cold and damp for such thin potations—was constantly coming in, and standing by the good woman’s side, watching her proceedings with deep, and generally silent, attention, as the eyes of a maiden might watch the hand of her mistress. He was not quite calmed by his reasonable conviction that the result would be a triumph, but he wished to have himself some share, however small it might be, in producing that triumph; so he would at times inquire, sotto voce, whether there was anything he could do. Should she want any more wood? Any more milk? He would now bring the jugs for the coffee, and for the milk, and the dish for the trout. He would now warm the plates.

At last it was time for us to leave the scene of these preparations. The moment had arrived, when all that could be done had been done for the coffee and the trout. And now the good man’s turn had come. No sense of social inferiority had he in serving his guests. Indeed in Livigno, his function was honourable, and conferred much distinction. He could not have served his guests with more observance had they come to his house direct from Paradise, for the purpose of opening to him the gate of Paradise, as soon as their supper should be finished. He was quite sure that the gate would be opened; and gladness, that stood in no need of words for its expression, filled his heart; but still something might depend, a little, but still something possibly, on his attention, and on the satisfaction his guests might receive from their supper. And now the coffee, the trout, the bread and cheese, and the butter are on the table at which we take our places. For some minutes he stands looking on in an attitude, and with an expression, of attention, and of readiness to fetch anything more that might be required. In his own thought he was sure that everything was of the best; that everything would go off well; that nothing had been forgotten; but he would stay for a few minutes to be assured of this by his visitors from that higher and better world. The assurance was given him; and he left the room, as if loath to go, but with his whole face beaming with the light that will suffuse the faces of those, who have heard the blessed words that have opened for them the gates of Paradise.

In all this, as we found the next morning, there was nothing assumed. It was his natural manner and disposition; only schnapps have the power of bringing out, and of making predominant over everything else, a man’s natural temper and disposition. Schnapps reveal the true character. Through them the bad-tempered are made more bad-tempered, and nothing but bad-tempered, and the good-tempered more good-tempered, and nothing but good-tempered. And so on this day, they made our host all over, body and soul, a host, and nothing but a host. Everything else, if there had been anything else, was obliterated. From the bottom of his heart to the tip of his tongue, and the tip of his fingers, he was a host. If there was ever at other times a mask on him, it was now torn off, and what was the essence of his being—the host—remained unrepressed, unclouded, unqualified.

The guests’ bedchamber contained three beds. Their scantling was so much beyond what is common in this part of the world, that one was almost brought to think that they had been intended to accommodate each of them two persons. This, however, is an uncertain inference, for of course they were the work of a native carpenter, and his ideas may have been enlarged by finding that in this room his handiwork would not be so much cramped for space as is usual hereabouts. Or perhaps the increase in the size of the beds might have been, and probably was, a result of this not being Grison ground; for we were now in Italy, and in Italy beds are generally as remarkable for amplitude, as in the Grisons for exiguity, of dimensions. As I had invited Christian to take his meals with me while we might remain here, I now extended the invitation to the offer of one of the three beds. The price I had to pay for this was, that I was obliged to sleep with the window closed. The good man had so unfeigned a horror of night air, that is to say of admitting fresh air from without, into the room in which he was sleeping, in consequence of some supposed ill-effects it would have on the eyes, that there was nothing for it but to comply with his prejudice.

We were now in Italy, and had been since we descended the Stretta. Our dinner, therefore, on the banks of the Spöl had been eaten in Italy, and this had somewhat heightened the flavour of the enjoyment so many other pleasant adjuncts had contributed to impart to it. Neither there, however, nor here, nor elsewhere on the way, had we seen anything of a custom-house, or of a custom-house official. We might, to the prejudice of the holders of the bonds of the Italian tobacco loan, have brought with us to Livigno, without let or hindrance of any kind, any amount of cigars that we could have carried. I take it, therefore, that the dwellers in these valleys on this part of the frontier, do not burn so many cents when consuming the fragrant leaf as other Italians, and so do not contribute much to the payment of the interest of that loan.

August 13.—At 6.30 A.M. I came down to see how things were going on. Snow was still falling. The hillsides down to the valley bottom were white, but the valley bottom was still green. It was a fête day, the greatest, I believe, of the year in these valleys. There was a stream of people passing the door on their way to the church, about half-a-mile off, just below the north end of the village. Men and women were all in their holiday attire. The get-up of the men was very like what was common some years ago, and may still be, in Ireland. Those who were in the fashion, perhaps who retained the old fashion, wore the swallow-tailed coat, of a frieze-like material, but of a dark colour, adorned with brass buttons, and the knee-breeches with dark gray stockings, I have already mentioned. Those who were of a less conservative turn of mind, wore a kind of shooting coat, and long trousers, but of the same dark material as the others; probably it was homespun. I saw no overcoats, which appear to be quite unknown in this part of the world, where people dress the same in fine weather and in foul, in summer and in winter. They give a reason for this practice; they say that what in this climate they have most to dread is checked transpiration; and that they dress the same at all times in order that they may not increase transpiration by additional clothing, or run the risk of having it checked by the removal of an overcoat: that to dress the same at all times is safest in their climate.

Several of the passers by at this early hour, and throughout the day, walked up to the table in the hall, on which stood the black bottles and small glasses. It would fortify them against the raw wet day. The shooting jackets which, perhaps, represented young Livigno and modern ideas, were more open to conviction on this point, than the swallow-tails. One brought with him a sturdy little fellow of about eleven years of age who took his schnapps with the same gravity and silence as his broad-shouldered parent. They walked together up to the table, did not ask for the glasses to be filled, emptied them when filled, and retired without a word, and without moving a muscle of the face any more than of the vocal mechanism.

At 7 o’clock a young man came into the kitchen to make a mess of polenta. When the milk had been raised to the full boiling-point, he added about an equal quantity of meal, perhaps a little more than as much, and stirred it continuously for about a quarter of an hour, with a strong crooked stick, to mix it equally and to prevent its burning. When the meal had absorbed all the milk, and had become very stiff, it was prepared. It required much strength to stir it. He and two companions now sat down at the kitchen table with the mess before them. One ate it with cheese; one with milk, and the other with butter. The old gentleman at the same time descended from his high stool in the chimney-corner, which he had in vain attempted to persuade me to occupy, and sat down at the same table for his breakfast, which his daughter-in-law had prepared for him. It was a large basin of soup, or more correctly, of a kind of vegetable broth. This he ate with black rye-bread. The maker of the polenta offered me some on a plate. As long as it is warm it is not a bad kind of food, though far from as good as the hot maize cakes you get in the United States, or as the same polenta would have been if in West Indian fashion it had been allowed to get cold, and then been cut into slices, and fried, or toasted. Its merit is that it is quickly prepared, and requires no apparatus but a pot and stick.

At 8.30 our turn came. Fish again, and everything we had had at supper last night. The anxious ministering of the good man was very impressive, though of course not in quite so high a degree as on the previous evening. It was too early in the day for that, though he was already on the road that would bring him to the same point. At 9.30 he announced that he must go to church, and that he should be absent for an hour and a half. I told him that I would accompany him. A gleam of satisfaction, felt in his heart, irradiated his face. ‘Well! well!’ was his reply. He disappeared for a few minutes, and returned in his festa dress; his face brightened with soap and with satisfaction. His attire was that of the innovating party. The function, at which we were to assist, was to commence at 10. All the world was on the road, and every face was towards the church. He conducted me into a detached chapel, a few yards from the church; it was already full. There were about sixty men in it—all men. No priest was present. All were employed in chanting a Latin Litany to the Holy Virgin. The harshness of their voices was great, and so was the dissonance, for hardly any attempt was made to keep together. When the Litany was concluded, we all left the chapel, and entered the church. Here mass was to be celebrated. We, that is to say the men, occupied the right side of the building; the women, who far outnumbered us, occupying the left side, and the whole of what might have been the west end. The service commenced by seven or eight women walking up the main aisle to the priest, and, as it appeared, making an offering, and then returning again down the aisle to their seats. The large proportion of men in the congregation, and the demeanour of all indicated that the controversies of the day had not reached Livigno. Here the sense of the Unseen, which, under whatever form it may show itself, is Religion, was quick and strong, and prepotent in shaping the thought and lives of all. In them debates about forms had not weakened the effect of the substance.

As we returned from the church the snow had at last begun to lie in the valley bottom. The grass was now buried, and everything on which the eye rested was white, with the exception of the roofs of the châlets, and the paved roadway, which, however, was slushy with half-melted snow. The contrast with the bright sun of yesterday at the same hour was complete. Twenty-four hours had transported us from Italy to Lapland. Probably in Lapland the aspect of things was at the moment more summer-like. There was no prospect now of doing anything to-day, for even if it were to clear speedily, it would be too late to cross the mountains. Dinner, therefore, began to assume in one’s thoughts a disproportionate importance; and we were not long in broaching the subject to the good man. What could he give us? We should be glad of the best he had. Had he any meat? He had. What was it? Was it dried beef? Well! it was a day for dried beef. That would be one thing. ‘No,’ he replied with sorrowful firmness. ‘That I cannot let you have.’ Why not? We can eat it; we have already become acquainted with it, and you see it has done us no harm. ‘No,’ again, but with the sorrowfulness and firmness more accentuated. ‘I can let you have eggs, and fat cheese, and butter, and soup, and fish, but not the dried beef.’

‘My good man, we shall be glad to have it. Why not let us have it?’

‘Because your souls are due to heaven as well as my own.’

It was, then, because it was the festa. ‘But,’ quoth the visitor, ‘that is just the reason why we should have it. To-day is not a fast, but a festa.’

‘No! no! It is impossible.’ Such subtleties were ensnaring. They came from the enemy of souls. The fact was that schnapps had quickened the good man’s religiosity, while they had obscured his understanding. It would have been unfeeling, and perhaps unavailing, to have argued the point, or pressed the request further in any way. And so with thanks for having reminded us of the road we must both travel to reach heaven, he was told that his guests would be content to-day with what elements of meat there might be in the eggs, and fat cheese, and soup, and fish, and would dispense with the thing itself in its ordinary Livigno form of dried beef. Who would not have abstained from a few shreds of the hock of a mummied ox for the sake of witnessing the satisfaction this announcement gave the good man? The momentary cloud passed away from his face, and he instantly became again, and, as the afternoon advanced, in a still higher degree than he had been yesterday, the man of one thought—the host, and nothing else. At dinner his ministerings were bliss; at supper they became devotion.

But dinner, though made the most of, was at last over; and supper, the next event, was a long way off. The roadway, and the roofs of the châlets had at last succumbed to the ceaseless snow, and everything was now unbroken white. The question was, therefore, forced upon us of What was to be done? How was the afternoon to be got through? The cold in the house was getting down to the bone, notwithstanding the dinner, and frequent visits to the kitchen fire, for the outer hall door, and all other doors were constantly kept open for the sake of the light, and the kitchen fire was a mere pretence, except when some cooking was going on. The card-players had again returned, notwithstanding the festa, or perhaps because of the festa, for ‘on festas the church before midday, and the tavern after midday’ is a saying here. What, then, can be done? Rather for the sake of saying something than from the hope of hearing any useful suggestion, I put my despair in the form of a question to the good man.

‘The best thing you can do,’ he replied with a readiness and decision which indicated that what he was announcing was the familiar practice of Livigno, the outcome of the experience of life in the place, ‘the best thing you can do is to go to bed till supper time.’

The novelty of the idea precluded an immediate answer. The time, however, required for fully taking it in, was also sufficient for enabling one to see that there was reason in it. Really there was nothing else that could be done; and so half an hour’s more looking out at the door, and walking up and down the hall, overcame the repugnance I had at first felt to the suggestion. Do at Livigno as the Livignese do worked in the same direction. And so at 3 P.M. we went up stairs, lay down upon our beds, drew our coverlets over us, and were soon lost, and continued lost for three hours, to all sense of the incongruity of a day that would have been wretched in the middle of January coming upon us suddenly in the middle of August.