sent in the hands of
joiners, and a card pointed the way to the 'provisionary
_salle-a-manger'_--not a bad name for it--in the neighbourhood of the
kitchen.

There was one redeeming feature. The people of the house were
nice-looking and well-dressed. But experience has taught me to view such
a phenomenon in French towns of humbler rank with somewhat mixed
feelings. When the house is superintended with a keen and watchful eye
by a young lady of fashionable appearance, who takes a personal interest
in a solitary traveller, and suggests an evening's _course_ on the lake,
or a morning's drive to some good view, and makes herself most winning
and agreeable; who takes the words, moreover, out of the mouth of a man
meditating an ordinary dinner, and assures him that she knows exactly
what he wants, and he shall be well satisfied, with a sisterly air that
makes the idea of francs and sous not sordid only, but impossible; I
have slowly learned to expect that this fashion and condescension will
appear in the bill. Prettiness is a very expensive item in such a case;
and as these three were all combined to a somewhat remarkable degree at
the Hotel d'Angleterre, the eventual bill made me angry, and I should
certainly try the Hotel de Geneve on any future visit to Annecy.

The first thing to be done was to determine the position of the Mont
Parmelan. I was prepared to find the people of the town denying the
existence of such a mountain; but, as it was visible from the door of
the hotel, they could not go quite so far as that. The small crowd at
the door repudiated the glacieres with one voice, and pointed out how
unlikely it was that Lyons should be supplied with ice from Annecy;
nevertheless, I continued to ask my way in spite of protestation, till
at length a lame man passed by, who said monsieur was quite right--he
himself knew two glacieres on the Mont Parmelan very well. He had never
seen either of them, but he knew them as well as if he had. It was
useless to go to them now, he added, for the owners extracted all the
ice early in the year, and stored it in holes in the lower part of the
mountain. He had no idea by what route they were to be approached from
Annecy, or on which side of the Mont Parmelan they lay.

I now looked on the local map, and determined that the best plan would
be to take the Bonneville diligence as far as Charvonnaz, the point on
the road which seemed to lie nearest to the roots of the Mont Parmelan,
an