s. Afterward we had vocal music, two of the
officers being good singers. They sang Beranger's songs and the charming
serenade from _Lalla Rookh_. I finally expressed a desire to hear the
Marseillaise. This seemed to take them by surprise, but one of the
singers, declaring that he had _"rien a refuser a madame"_ boldly struck
up,

Allons, enfants de la patrie,
Le jour de gloire est arrive;

but his companions checked him before he had finished the first stanza.
The law forbade, they said, the production of the Marseillaise in
society. We were a society: the guard would hear us and might report it.

"Vous voyez, madame," said the singer, "n'il n'est pas defendu d'etre
voleur, mais c'est defendu d'etre attrape" (It is not against the law to
be a thief, but to be caught.)

My traveling--companions reached their destination early in the morning,
and, very gallantly expressing regrets that they were not going over the
Alps, so as to bear mer company, bade me farewell.

From the rear of the St. Michel hotel, called the Lion d'Or, I watched
the preparations for crossing Mont Cenis. Three diligences were being
crazily loaded with our baggage. The men who loaded them seemed
imitating the Alpine structure. They piled trunk on trunk to the height
of thirty feet, I verily believe; and if some one should nudge my elbow
and say "fifty," I should write it down so without manifesting the least
surprise.

When the preparations were finished the setting sun was shining clearly
on the white summits above, and we commenced slowly winding up the noble
zigzag road. Rude mountain children kept up with our diligences, asked
for sous and wished us _bon voyage_ in the name of the Virgin.

The grandeur, but especially the extent and number, of the Alpine peaks
impressed me with a vague, undefinable sense, which was not, I think,
the anticipated sensation; and indeed if I had been in a poetic mood, it
would have been quickly dissipated by the mock raptures of a young
Englishman with a poodly moustache and an eye-glass. He called our
attention to every chasm, gorge and waterfall, as if we had been wholly
incapable of seeing or appreciating anything without his aid. As for me,
I did not feel like disputing his susceptibility. I was suffering an
uneasy apprehension of an avalanche--not of snow, but of trunks and
boxes from the topheavy diligences ahead of us. However, we reached the
top of Mont Cenis safely by means of thirteen mules t