eller of Swiss honey, Ichener, whom he had met at the fair at
Beaucaire. Then, on the persistent silence of his captors, he bethought
him that this might be another bit of machinery in Bompard's fairyland;
so, addressing the officer, he said with sly air: "For fun, _que!_.. ha!
_vai_, you rogue, I know very well it is all a joke."

"Not another word, or I'll gag you," said the officer, rolling terrible
eyes as if he meant to spit him on his sabre.

The other kept quiet, and stirred no more, but gazed through the door at
the lake, the tall mountains of a humid green, the hotels and pensions
with variegated roofs and gilded signs visible for miles, and on the
slopes, as at the Rigi, a coming and going of market and provision
baskets, and (like the Rigi again) a comical little railway, a dangerous
mechanical plaything crawling up the height to Glion, and--to complete
the resemblance to _Regina Montium_--a pouring, beating rain, an
exchange of water and mist from the sky to Leman and Leman to the sky,
the clouds descending till they touched the waves.

The vehicle crossed a drawbridge between a cluster of little shops of
"chamoiseries," penknives, corkscrews, pocket-combs, etc., and stopped
in the courtyard of an old castle overgrown with weeds, flanked by two
round pepper-pot towers with black balconies guarded by parapets and
supported by beams. Where was he? Tartarin learned where when he heard
the officer of gendarmerie discussing the matter with the concierge of
the castle, a fat man in a Greek cap who was jangling a bunch of rusty
keys.

"Solitary confinement... but I haven't a place for him. The others have
taken all... unless we put him in Bonnivard's dungeon."

"Yes, put him in Bonnivard's dungeon; that's good enough for him,"
ordered the captain; and it was done as he said.

This Castle of Chillon, about which the P. C. A. had never for two days
ceased to discourse to his dear Alpinists, and in which, by the irony of
fate, he found himself suddenly incarcerated without knowing why, is one
of the most frequented historical monuments in Switzerland. After
having served as a summer residence to the Dukes of Savoie, then as a
state-prison, afterwards as an arsenal for arms and munitions, it
is to-day the mere pretext for an excursion, like the Rigi and the
Tellsplatte. It still contains, however, a post of gendarmerie and a
"violon," that is, a cell for drunkards and the naughty boys of the
neighbourhood; but th