descending night.

Far away, and far down in the deep valley, the lights of Chamounix and
its satellite villages sparkled like a troupe of fallen stars. They
lay in a bright heap, clustered together; and Innocentina, coming up
with us at this moment, said that they were like raisins sunk together
at the bottom of a pudding. The late rain had set all the little
torrents talking, and we were silent, listening to their gossip of the
mountains' secrets.

[Illustration]

CHAPTER XVIII

Rank Tyranny

"Thou art past the tyrant's stroke."
--SHAKESPEARE.

We seemed to have formed a habit, the Boy and I, of steering always
for a Hotel Mont Blanc, if there were one in a town; so that now we
had come to look upon a hostelry with such a name as a sort of second
home, a daughter of a mother house. There were still two other reasons
why we should select the Mont Blanc in Chamounix: the first, because
the Contessa was going there and had asked us to do likewise; the
second, because at Martigny we had seen an advertisement of the hotel
which stated that it was situated in a "_vaste parc avec chamois_."

Our imagination pictured an ancient chateau, altered for modern uses,
shut away from the outer world in a mysterious forest of dark pines,
where wild chamois sported gracefully at will, leaping across chasms
from one overhanging rock to another.

It was long past twilight when our little procession of four human
beings and three beasts of burden straggled through a lighted gateway
which we had been told to enter for the Hotel Mont Blanc. With one
blow our ancient castle was shattered. At a hundred metres distant
from the street rose an enormous modern hotel, blazing with light at
every window. Where was the vast park with its crowding pines and its
ravines for the wild chamois? It must be somewhere, since the
advertisement certified its existence, and so must the chamois.
Perhaps the forest lay behind the hotel; but the Boy was too tired to
care, and to us both baths, food, and rest were for the moment worth
more than parks or chamois. The hotel struck a high note of
civilisation, and I had seen nothing so fine since London or Paris.
The Boy and I dined late and sumptuously, tete-a-tete, for the hot sun
and the long drive had sent Gaeta to bed, chastened with a headache;
and, weary as he was, the Little Pal had pluck enough left to suggest
an appointment for early next morning. "I shall wa