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now," said Adele. "What?" said Berry. My wife smiled. "He'd 've made tracks for Spain," she said. * * * * * The French sergeant saluted, Daphne nodded, Berry said, "Down with everything," I touched my hat, and we rolled slowly over the little bridge out of one country into another. Our reception was very serious. So far as our papers were concerned, the Spanish N.C.O. knew his job and did it with a soldierly, if somewhat trying, precision. Pong was diligently compared with the tale of his _triptyque_. Our faces were respectively compared with the unflattering vignettes pasted upon our passports. The visas were deliberately inspected. Our certificates were unfolded and scrutinised. Our travelling pass was digested. To our great relief, however, he let the luggage go. We had no contraband, but we were two hours late, and to displace and replace securely a trunk and a dressing-case upon the back of a coupe takes several minutes and necessitates considerable exertion of a very unpleasant kind. Finally, having purchased a local permit for five pesetas, we were suffered to proceed. We were now at the mouth of a gorge and the pass was before us. Had the gorge been a rift in the range, a road had been cut by the side of the torrent, and our way, if tortuous, had been as flat as your hand. But the gorge was a _cul de sac_--a beautiful blind alley, with mountains' flanks for walls. So the road had been made to scale one side of the alley--to make its winding way as best it could, turning and twisting and doubling upon itself, up to a windy saddle which we could hardly see. I gave the car its head, and we went at a wicked hill as a bull at a gate. Almost immediately the scenery became superb. With every yard the walls of the gorge were drawing further apart, slowly revealing themselves in all their glory. Forests and waterfalls, precipices and greenswards, grey lichened crags and sun-bathed terraces, up, above all, an exquisite vesture of snow, flawless and dazzling--these stood for beauty. All the wonder of height, the towering proportions of the place, the bewildering pitch of the sky--these stood for grandeur. An infinite serenity, an imperturbable peace, a silence which the faint gush of springs served to enrich--these stood for majesty. Nature has throne-rooms about the world, and this was one of them. I started the engine again--for we had instinctively sto
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