publicans flatteringly
polite, but we found them firm, and, for all I know, honest. At least
they seemed as honest as we were, and that is saying a great deal. What
struck us from the beginning was the surliness of the men and the
industry of the women; and I am persuaded that the Swiss Government is
really carried on by the house-keeping sex. At any rate, the postmaster
of Villeneuve was a woman; her little girl brought the mail up from the
railway station in a hand-cart, and her old mother helped her to
understand my French. They were rather cross about it, and one day, with
the assistance of a child in arms, they defeated me in an attempt I made
to get a postal order. I dare say they thought it quite a triumph; but
it was not so very much to be proud of. At that period my French, always
spoken with the Venetian accent of the friend with whom I had studied it
many years before, was taking on strange and wilful characteristics,
which would have disabled me in the presence of a much less formidable
force. I think the only person really able to interpret me was the
amiable mistress of the Croix Blanche, to whose hostelry I went every
day for my after-dinner coffee. She knew what I wanted whenever I asked
for it, and I simplified my wants so as to meet her in the same spirit.
The inn stood midway of the village street that for hundreds of yards
followed the curve of the lake shore with its two lines of high stone
houses. At one end of it stood a tower springing out of an almost
fabulous past; then you came to the first of three plashing fountains,
where cattle were always drinking, and bareheaded girls washing
vegetables for the pot. Aloft swung the lamps that lighted the village,
on ropes stretching across the street. I believe some distinction was
ascribed to Villeneuve for the antiquity of this method of
street-lighting. There were numbers of useful shops along the street,
which wandered out into the country on the levels of the Rhone, where
the mountains presently shut in so close that there was scarcely room
for the railway to get through. What finally became of the highway I
don't know. One day I tried to run it down, but after a long chase I was
glad to get myself brought back in a diligence from the next village.

[Illustration: _"They helped to make the hay in the marshes"_]

The road became a street and ceased to be so with an abruptness that
admitted nothing of suburban hesitation or compromise, and Villeneuve,